


The Secret and Scandalous History of the Protector of Beacon Hills

by Escalus



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Injury, Loneliness, M/M, Sceo Week 2018, SceoSecretSanta, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-09-26 19:19:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17147591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escalus/pseuds/Escalus
Summary: At the beginning of senior year, an old friend returns to Beacon Hills and wants to join Scott's pack.  As much as Scott is distracted by murderous chimeras, Dread Doctors, and decaying friendships, he spends way too much time thinking about Theo Raeken.Secret Santa for Fandom_Oracle's prompt "Pre-relationship detailing how Scott grew to notice his attraction to Theo and his internal feelings about it."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fandom_oracle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_oracle/gifts).



> This work uses quotes and scenes from a show for homage purposes only. The author does not own any of the characters or plots. 
> 
> Except for two scenes (a phone call with Deucalion and the final scene taking place between 6A and 6B) this is an internal monologue describing what Scott might have been feeling from 5x01 to 6x10.

It starts like this: Theo Raeken comes to his rescue.

Scott hates the fact that every good thing he has is tainted. It’s true. He had a wonderful relationship with his mother until she shrank from him in fear and disgust and then didn’t look him in the eyes for a week. They’ve never really talked about that. He tells everyone that their relationship is stronger than ever but that’s a lie. He lies like that because he doesn’t know how to say that their relationship has changed so much that he doesn’t recognize it anymore. 

He’s been rebuilding his relationship with his father, but it’s still is so fragile and tentative. He can’t be sure how his father would react to Scott being a werewolf, so he keeps it a secret from Rafael. His dad wants to know, and that makes Scott happy, but … it’s not wise to trust someone who left because it was easier than being responsible, no matter how long ago that happened. 

Sometimes he thinks that he’s only friends with Stiles because they’ve always been friends and wouldn’t know how to act if they weren’t. He doesn’t know if they speak the same language anymore, and he’s absolutely sure that they don’t have the same goals. Stiles has spent hours planning for them all to live in San Francisco without once asking Scott whether he even wants to live with him. What if he wants to move in with Kira? 

And then there’s a tattoo on his left arm that once stood for something amazing. For the span of a few weeks, he was enraptured by this something; he had a love so overwhelming that it helped him beat back the darkness. Now the tattoo stands for pain, loss, a magic tree stump, and the fact that he’ll never be human again.

Every good thing in his life is tainted.

Kira presses him back up against the wall of the tunnel to the lacrosse field, and, for a moment, just for a moment, he is sure that everything will be all right. Sure, Kira’s new attitude is more aggressive than playful, but they haven’t seen each other for like a whole week. If this is how she was going to react every time she went on a trip, Scott would certainly be down for her taking more vacations.

Then this asshole shows up. He’s covered in black blood with talons that glow electric blue. He blathers on about how Scott supposedly took down Deucalion and broke the Argents and Scott doesn’t bother to correct him because _it isn’t even worth it._ This jerk is just another psycho who thinks power is going to make everything better; it must be Monday. 

So, they fight because they have to fight, and Kira whips off her belt and turns it into a sword and isn’t that a kick in the pants? His second girlfriend carries a weapon at all times, exactly as his first girlfriend did. Neither of them felt safe enough to go around being unarmed.

Every good thing in his life is tainted.

This asshole tosses him and Kira around for a bit. Scott has gotten better at fighting, but the guy seems really tough. He’s as strong as Scott, and he seems to shrug off wounds as if they were nothing. His scent consists of ozone, and sewer, and weird drugs. Scott doesn’t spend much time trying to figure it out. He’s far more focused on staying alive.

It’s not looking too good for either Kira or him until another werewolf drops down from the sky. Scott knows that for the next few days, he will try not to think about what would have happened if this stranger hadn’t come and joined the fray. The new guy is good but not good enough, so the power-mad asshole puts him down hard. It does give Scott and Kira the chance to catch their breaths so they can start fighting once more.

The fight nears its end when his would-be assassin stabs his glowing blue talons into Scott's chest. Scott can feel his heart trying to beat around the glowing blue claws; it’s just another experience he’ll carry with him for the rest of his life. But being impaled on someone else’s hand isn’t enough, the claws start pulling something vital out of him. Scott feels himself weakening and then, for a moment – just the slightest moment – it is as if he is human again. He holds onto that feeling, even when he knows he should be trying to stop the monster causing it.

Most of the people in his life choose not to remember that he liked being human. Yeah, he had asthma; that was a big downside. And yeah, he can play first line now, and that would be great if he didn’t have to worry about someone attacking them during a game or Liam losing control on the pitch eight goddamn months after he was bitten. 

Scott snaps back to the here and now when he hears others arrive. Malia, Stiles, and Liam have shown up, and Kira is ready to jump back into the fight with her sword. The new werewolf is growling in encouragement. They all expect him to win. They all need him to win.

So he wins. It’s that simple.

Scott lets the killer go with a threat, even as he remembers Peter’s scolding in La Iglesia, and he imagines Peter laughing at him. Every alpha he has ever met would kill this asshole, even Satomi. Scott just wants him gone. He wants to go back to the Senior Scribe and do something normal for once, not that he has any idea anymore what that’s supposed to be like. It was too much for him to hope that he could have at least one semester in high school when his decisions were about which party to go to and not whether someone lives or dies.

Every good thing in his life is tainted.

The new, non-killer werewolf hints that they know each other, and Scott instantly recognizes him from long ago: it’s Theo Raeken from fourth grade. Scott feels a burst of nostalgia, and he knows it shows on his face. Theo, Stiles, and him played together in what seems must have been another world but was actually this world, only a long time ago. When Scott smiles, Theo smiles right back. He’s heard Scott’s story from afar, he tells them all, and he wants to be in his pack. 

Immediately, of course, Stiles has to go and ruin it. He’s got a bad feeling about this kid, claiming that he’s not actually Theo, even though it absolutely is Theo. Stiles thinks the timing’s suspicious, and Scott doesn’t say that it’s not suspicious that a senior at Beacon Hills High School is at the high school on Senior Scribe night. Scott lets Stiles talk but tries to direct him back to the person who actually tried to kill him and not the person who tried to save him from being killed. Scott can’t help but notice that Stiles doesn’t bother to ask whether he’s all right, or whether Kira’s all right. It’s not like Scott has been stabbed in the chest or anything.

Scott gets a sense of déjà vu; it’s a new twist on an old song. Someone expresses interest in Scott, and suddenly Stiles is sure that this person is the freaking Antichrist. It happened with Deaton, with Derek, with Isaac, with Kira, with Liam; someone being interested in Scott makes no sense to Stiles, so it must be some sort of obscure threat. Scott imagines just for a moment rounding on Stiles and telling him that it isn’t strange that someone wants to join the True Alpha’s pack, and it isn’t strange that a supernatural creature who originally lived in Beacon Hills would be drawn back here by the Nemeton. But he doesn’t – because if he does, Stiles will sulk and whine and bitch for days, and all Scott wants is peace.

Scott pushes through it, and they meet up with Lydia. He pastes a smile on his face, because this is supposed to be a happy occasion. He’s supposed to be celebrating the final year of school with his friends. But he can’t shake a feeling that he knows too well – the feeling that everything is about to go to hell once more. There will be blood and screaming, and he’ll get to make the calls that’ll put his friends in danger. 

He writes his initials on the shelf. He knows, in his gut, what’s coming. He wishes he could spend time with his friends getting stupid drunk at parties or planning the senior prom. He wishes he could get to know his old friend Theo again like normal people would. He wishes that nothing bad had ever happened, and that everything was going to be all right forever. He knows none of those wishes will come true.

He writes _AA_ on the shelf. He worries that doing this might hurt Kira’s feelings and it might reopen Lydia’s and Stiles’ wounds. But it’s the only thing he can do for Allison, because he can’t protect her anymore. He can only make sure she isn’t forgotten.

Every good thing in his life is tainted.

**********

Scott is sitting on the concrete steps, his books in his lap. He’s scared. Ms. Finch was looking right at him when she talked about the people who don’t belong in her class. She must have been talking to him. She probably looked at his grades and at his attendance records and thinks he’s a dumb jock slacker.

Maybe he is. If he wants to be a veterinarian, if he wants to be Dr. McCall as he told that little girl, he must do well this semester. It can’t be stressed enough how well he needs to do. But can he? He’s worked so hard to fix what this werewolf shit has done to his grades. He’s managed to pull it together, but there is still a difference between not failing and succeeding in an advanced placement class. Maybe he’s just not smart enough.

Stiles appears and demands that he go interrogate Theo with him. Of course, his best friend doesn’t notice that Scott’s upset. He doesn’t ask why he’s sitting alone during his free period cuddling his books. 

He shouldn’t think that about Stiles, but Scott understands. Their dynamic has always been this way. Stiles sets the topic for the day and holds forth on what it means and what they should do and Scott serves as the faithful audience. It’s why Stiles gets so mad when things happen – even things that have nothing to do with him – without his input. 

But things can’t be that way anymore, and Stiles just doesn’t get it. Scott’s alpha – not that he wanted to be – and that means the responsibility is his. Unfortunately, much of the time, Stiles’ input is completely focused on what Stiles’ wants at any given moment, and an alpha can’t think that way. Take now. Instead of Scott being able to deal with a real problem, his problem, the alpha has to go watch Stiles hurl accusations at an old friend whose only crime was coming to Scott’s aid. 

Theo tells his story in the locker room. Scott can see the whole thing play out perfectly as Theo talks about getting the Bite. In his mind’s eye, he knows exactly what it means when Theo says in that breathless, unbelieving tone _“It came at me so fast.”_ He knows, intimately, what Theo felt when he touches his hip to indicate where he was bitten. 

And Theo knows what Scott felt like.

Then Stiles comes in with the accusations, because that’s what Stiles does. Scott wants to tell him he should have more sympathy, because Stiles knows what it’s like to have everything you are taken from you. It wouldn’t help, because Stiles believes that since being kind doesn’t come naturally to him, he doesn’t even have to try. After all, Stiles knows he’s not the person who is going to pick up the pieces after he bulldozes over someone else’s feelings. That’s what Scott is for. 

Scott is prepared to do exactly that, though he doesn’t understand why Theo is standing there and taking this bullshit from Stiles, who has literally told Theo he is ‘lying your ass off’ based _on a gut feeling_ after knowing Theo for under twenty-four hours. It’s amazing that Theo takes it, because Stiles isn’t Theo’s best friend; Theo hasn’t learned to put up with Stiles’ insecurity and passive-aggressive sarcasm by being exposed to it for years. Scott expects Theo to storm away, and then Scott will go and smooth things out later, if Theo will even talk to him after being cornered in a locker room and forced to share his trauma with people he thought could have been his friends.

But Theo doesn’t walk. Even after Stiles accuses him of being an impostor. He stays, and he tells a story that Scott suddenly remembers. He does remember telling Theo about what happens in the hospital when you have an asthma attack. If Theo is an impostor, he’s the best impostor in the history of impostors.

Scott realizes something nice at that point – Theo’s the first person in a long time to talk about who Scott used to be. The only other people who knew him – his mom, Stiles, Dr. Deaton – they don’t talk anymore about who Scott was before he became a werewolf. Scott is sure they have their reasons. Dr. Deaton is his Emissary; it’s his job to advise Scott on how to be alpha now. Scott thinks maybe it’s too painful for his mom to think about his life before lycanthropy. 

And Stiles? Stiles loves the supernatural, even after his own horrific experiences. There’s always a part of Stiles that wants to dig into the mysteries of it. That’s probably one of the reasons he’s sure Theo is a bad guy – it’s been six months since anything has happened, and Stiles is probably getting bored. No matter his motivation, Stiles has no use for pre-Bite Scott.

But Theo remembers who Scott used to be. Scott likes that. 

After Theo leaves to go to class, Stiles refuses to even consider that he could be mistaken. He’s so sure that he’s right and so desperate to prove that Scott is wrong to give Theo the benefit of the doubt that Scott is sure Stiles’ going to do something terrible.

**********

Stiles does do something terrible, and he manages to drag Liam into it.

Scott should have intervened after the library. Stiles had come in, fresh from risking expulsion by breaking into the Administration Office, and waved around a speeding ticket and a transfer form. When people weren’t particularly impressed with his “evidence” of Theo’s supposed villainy, he stormed off shouting at his friends that he didn’t need them.

Scott should have intervened. He should have pointed out that the difference between signatures had a dozen possible explanations other than Theo was there to kill them all. He should have pointed out that the only person that had done anything wrong was Stiles _by breaking into the Administration Office_ and _by yelling at all his friends._ But he didn’t.

Because he needed to study. He wants to be a veterinarian. Stiles may be able to get away with not studying, but Scott, Kira, and Malia couldn’t. 

Scott had still been studying when Mason texted him wondering if he had seen Liam, who was very late for their workout session. With a feeling of dread heavy in the pit of his stomach, Scott puts away the last bit of reading that he needed to do and rides out to find the members of his pack.

He does find them, and Scott stands there at Stiles’ jeep as they appear out of the woods. In all his one-hundred-percent-guaranteed-to-be-right research, Stiles had apparently not discovered precisely where Theo’s sister, Tara, had died. But Scott isn’t here to scold. He tells himself that. He’s here to do what he should have done earlier and intervene, and that means he has to keep this positive.

“Find anything?”

“Nope.” Great. Scott’s going to have to make his way through the endless maze of Stiles’ defense mechanisms before they can actually talk about this. 

“I fell in a hole.” Liam tries his best to defuse the situation. He doesn’t want Scott to be mad at him, but he doesn’t understand. Scott’s not mad. Getting mad isn’t going to help the fact that Stiles is so fixated on a threat he can’t prove he dragged Scott’s beta into a fiasco that had to be humiliating for everyone involved and especially painful for Theo.

Scott can only imagine what it felt like to confront Theo while he was mourning his dead sister. He says as much. Stiles deflects by focusing on the jeep. Deflection is always Stiles’ first tactic.

His second tactic is blame shifting. Stiles tries to put words in Scott’s mouth. Scott never said that Stiles was a stalker (though he is) or that he’s crazy and totally paranoid (though he is following someone around based on nothing more than bad handwriting and a hunch). This is Stiles trying to make Scott be the one at fault. If only Scott would do every single thing Stiles asks, none of this would have happened.

Scott tries to point out that Stiles has been wrong in the past, and that maybe, just maybe, he could give Theo the benefit of the doubt until Theo actually does something wrong. But that’s not good enough for Stiles. Stiles is the one who violated Theo’s privacy again and again and found nothing, but Stiles can’t admit that. Because even after all they’ve been through, Stiles is always afraid that he doesn’t belong in the pack unless he’s the master detective. Nothing Scott has ever said has reassured him that it’s okay for Stiles to be wrong once in a while.

Stiles even brings up Peter. He accuses Scott of having hope for him, as if that were a bad thing. Scott does have hope for Peter, because he’s felt the flames that burned all the good out of the man who bit him. And those wounds can heal. 

Then Stiles moves to his third tactic: anger. Because Stiles understands that regardless of his gut instinct about Theo, he’s gone too far. But Stiles will never admit to making a mistake, because he somehow thinks that if he does, no one will like him anymore.

“Because you trust everyone!” He screams like a madman and hurts himself on the jeep’s engine. 

Scott takes his pain, because he doesn’t want to see Stiles hurt, but he wishes he could heal Stiles’ warped view of him. Scott didn’t trust Derek at first. Scott didn’t trust Deucalion. Scott has never trusted Gerard. There were times when Scott didn’t even trust Allison. The truth is that Scott hasn’t trusted many people, but that truth is meaningless in the face of Stiles’ insecurities.

The only person he ever trusted without reservation was Stiles, and that got him a sword in the gut.

Later on that night, he calls Theo, who had given Scott his number a second before he began his story in the locker room, like normal people do. Theo isn’t angry. He compliments Scott. He says that it must feel wonderful to have someone looking out for Scott and his pack like that. Scott apologizes anyway, because that’s what alphas do when members of their pack act poorly. Scott’s smiling though when he hangs up.

Unfortunately, Theo is wrong. If Stiles had really wanted to look out for the pack, he’d have helped Scott study for the AP Biology sieve test or dug into the identity of the werewolf with the glowing blue claws. He wouldn’t have dragged Liam into the woods in the middle of the night to stalk a guy who has done nothing but help them.


	2. Chapter 2

Tracy Stewart is trapped in a nightmare. The pack learns she suffers from night terrors and during one she killed her own father. She had also shown up at the school, fearful and unstable, and then she had collapsed right in front of Scott’s eyes. He had brought her to Deaton’s, because if anyone could tell what was going on with her, he could.

But Deaton can’t. While he was examining her, she wakes up, transforms into a kanima and paralyzes everyone. Malia comes to first and chases after her, leaving the rest of them lying on the floor. 

Theo appears, once again, to help.

Scott is ashamed of himself. He could make excuses for his behavior. He could say he has been lying paralyzed and anxious on the floor. He could say he’s worried for Malia, off trying to track Tracy alone. They would only be excuses. Theo comes to help simply to be helpful, and Scott leads off by snapping at him as if he was doing something suspicious. Scott can’t completely ignore Stiles’ misgivings.

“How’d you find us?” 

“’Cause you work here.”

It’s a simple deduction. It’s not a sign of sinister intent. Scott’s goddamn motorbike, which everyone at school can identify as his, is parked right outside the clinic where he’s worked for years. 

Theo has to beg to help. Scott looks at Deaton and Stiles for permission to let him. This is the type of leader Scott has become.

What does Theo do in the face of Scott’s suspicion? What does Theo do when he has to _negotiate_ assisting people in capturing some poor girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing? When they finally track down Tracy at the sheriff’s station, he saves Lydia’s life. His tourniquet keeps the bleeding under control. Scott is standing there at the hospital when his mother praises Theo for quick thinking.

It’s disgusting. Scott can’t imagine why Theo still wants to be in this pack, when he’s faced nothing but suspicion and exclusion. 

Afterwards, they all go to their respective homes, and Scott tries to bury his problems in Kira, which isn’t fair to her. But it doesn’t work, because they can’t even kiss without being interrupted. Deaton explains what he thinks is going on, and the vet looks worried and Deaton never looks worried. His advice is urgent, and Scott’s Emissary is leaving and Deaton never leaves unless he doesn’t have a choice.

But Scott still has to go to school if he wants to have a future, yet he can’t ignore that someone mutilated Tracy into that thing and then killed her. He’s sitting in class and he’s trying to pay attention to the lecture. He’s listening to Theo and Kira answer questions, but his mind is everywhere else. His mind is on … chimeras. They’re chimeras.

Mrs. Finch confronts him. He bites down on his embarrassment. No, he didn’t do the reading, because he was paralyzed by a girl who thought she was dreaming and then argued with a sheriff whose dedication to the law changes daily and he has to deal with a friend whose traumas have made him a raving paranoid and he can’t find the time to take care of any of the people who care about him. So, he can’t answer the question. It’s just another one of many questions, and _he doesn’t have fucking answers for any of them._

He’s ashamed of himself.

**********

Scott shows the Dread Doctors’ book to Theo, and Theo automatically volunteers to read it. Scott is sick to his stomach, because the only connection between Theo and the Dread Doctors that Scott has found is that they both showed up at the same time. It’s a stretch to connect them, and Scott is so very happy that Theo doesn’t take it as an accusation. The boy has done nothing to deserve one.

“You guys do this a lot?” Theo asks, curious.

Scott doesn’t understand. “Do what?”

“Get involved.” 

“Yeah, I guess.” It’s become a habit now, like brushing his teeth every morning. 

Normal people would call the police if they were threatened, but somehow Scott’s become the Protector of Beacon Hills, whatever that means, and so he doesn’t even question that he’s going to spend time reading a book found in the bedroom of a girl mutilated and killed by mad scientists. In the locker room, Theo tries to be helpful and points out Valack’s name in the acknowledgements. 

Once the pack gathers, Lydia has noticed Dr. Valack’s name as well, so now it’s off to Eichen House they go, which has to be one of Scott’s least favorite places in the whole world. He doesn’t ask Theo to come with him, because if Theo’s not pack, then there is no reason to ask him to risk his life going to that hellhole.

And as much as he might want to include Theo in their pack, he has enough to worry about without putting some ignorant stranger in harm’s way.

For example, Kira is acting off. Really off. She’s forgetful, she’s a little resentful, and the fox spirit within her is bigger than it used to be. She asked him to look at it right before they left for the mental institution, and when he did not only was it six inches taller than before, it moved independently from Kira.

He didn’t tell her. He should have; he knows he should have but all he could hear was Stiles’ voice sneering _Should have done your reading, Scott._

Scott doesn’t want to doubt her. He loves her. He does, so he’s not going to let fear, or her mother, or the past drive them apart. So he doesn’t say anything. He tells himself that there is nothing wrong with Kira. Except she tried to kill someone. No, that isn’t really a fair description. When they had been at Sinema, Kira’s fox tried to kill someone while shouting in Japanese, while Kira wasn’t aware of what was going on. Lucas was lying on the ground, defeated and unconscious, and she nearly executed him. 

She’s whispering the same thing in her sleep, and Scott’s fear grows no matter how many times he ignores it.

When he brings his concerns to Stiles before the gates of Eichen House – as Stiles has always wanted him to – his friend, for some reason, starts arguing that maybe Kira didn’t have a choice, and it confuses the hell out of Scott because Stiles wasn’t even there. Scott can’t figure out why Stiles is playing Devils’ Advocate, because what Kira’s fox wanted to do was execution, pure and simple. 

Tracy loved her dad. They’ve learned nothing that would make them think that she had problems with her psychiatrist or Ms. Martin. Yet she killed or tried to kill them because someone had turned her into a monster who thought she was trapped in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up. Corey, Lucas’s boyfriend, had described the chimera as ‘shy.’ Lucas wasn’t shy when he rampaged across Sinema. He was _changed,_ against his will. That made these two kids victims. Victims just like Stiles was a victim when he got possessed. Victims just like Lydia was a victim when Peter took control of her. Victims just like Theo. Victims just like Scott. Victims who needed saving.

“We shouldn’t be killing the people we’re supposed to save.”

Stiles seems frustrated with that answer, as if he can’t understand the difference between a victim and a victimizer. Scott’s suddenly worries that he’s been taking Stiles for granted. Is there more of a problem than just a difference in opinion?

They survive the visit to Eichen House and the assault of the Dread Doctors. They learn enough from Valack that everyone’s shaken, except for Scott, who ends up half cooked. He pushes down the fear of what’s happening to Kira long enough to tell her the truth. He loves her, and to him, that’s the only truth that matters.

Everyone has a dangerous night. While Scott is lying on the ground, charred, Lydia and Stiles evade the Doctors after haggling with Valack. Theo saves Malia’s life after she hallucinated so badly that she runs out into the middle of the highway while the rest of them were in Eichen House. It must be saving his girlfriend that wins Stiles over, because he stops – publically at least – obsessing over Theo’s hidden menace completely. 

But, even so, Scott doesn’t invite Theo into the pack, even after Theo has saved four separate members of it. It bugs Scott that he can’t bring himself to do it, but he’s got so many things to worry about, and there’s so much danger, that maybe he just doesn’t want to see Theo stop smiling. Because no one in the pack is smiling. At all.

Now they have to read that book.

**********

“Isn’t everybody a little weird in high school?”

Scott is resting his hands on the balcony, looking across the sea of faces. He knows some of them, but not very well. Theo has a point, but it’s not that Scott could tell him what a normal high school student is like. He has no frame of reference. He hasn’t felt comfortable at Beacon Hills High School since the second semester of sophomore year, and he knows that people look at him differently. He’s watched them shy away from him. No one has come out and said anything, but he wonders if they can subconsciously tell he’s not quite human anymore: a wolf among the sheep.

“Yeah,” Scott admits. “Good point.”

“You remember that Tracy went on a killing spree after reading that?”

It’s actually a pretty legitimate concern, and it’s one that Scott shares. Tracy went on a murder spree, and Malia ran into traffic. If the werecoyote had been alone when she suffered that hallucination, she might have died.

“You think it’s a bad idea?”

Theo is honest. “I think Malia almost getting run down by a car could've been bad. Well, that's why you guys haven't finished it, right?”

“We’re going to.” 

“Scott, I came here hoping to find a pack. I wasn’t planning on watching one fall apart.”

His protest that the book is all they have sounds feeble even to his own ears. Scott nearly stops in his tracks, for he is struck by the possibility that Theo’s fear is true. Is the pack falling apart? Sure, Stiles is paranoid and acting out, Lydia is spending most of her time with Parrish, Malia is stressed out because of Tracy’s death and her own past, and Kira’s fox spirit …

Scott pushes the thought away, because they’ve always had stressors like that in their lives. He can’t afford to think these type of thoughts. He has to be the leader, he has a responsibility, and a large part in that is always believing that they will find the answer to their problems.

For example, Stiles’ being hypervigilant and obsessive is just how Stiles is, and it might be annoying Scott more than normal, but they’ve been friends forever, and they’ll get past this. Lydia has always been independent, but that doesn’t mean she’s not there when she needs to be – she did go to Eichen House with them. Malia _should_ be stressed out over a death she tried to prevent and terrifying hallucinations of her family’s destruction. And Kira’s fox spirit …

Theo must have noticed his hesitation, because he volunteers to read the book with them. Scott doesn’t turn him down, though part of him knows that he should. Another part of him is simply happy that someone thinks enough of his ideas to want to join in. He’s happy that Theo is there.

When they gather in Scott’s house, no one is particularly eager to read the book. Even if Malia is there to keep an eye on them, everyone is nervous and they are covering it with banter. But eventually, they settle down to read, because they have no choice.

Ironically, Scott’s never been into horror fiction or movies. He’s not a snob about it, but he’s never been interested in most of what passes for scary in popular culture. Even before he became a horror-movie monster himself, he was never attracted to things where failure and pointlessness seemed foregone conclusions. Almost every horror movie he saw either had some unbeatable slasher where only one person would survive or an army of zombies that would eat everyone in the end. He needed a little hope in his entertainment.

 _The Dread Doctors_ novel is schlocky gore, and he has to force himself to focus on it. No one else seems to be enjoying their reading either. Kira looks like she has the mother of all headaches, and everyone seemed drained by their task. 

Theo sits in his chair, focused on the book. Scott finds himself watching the werewolf out of the corner of his eye. Theo doesn’t need to be here, but he wants to be here. Scott should have offered him a place in the pack, if he’s going to let Theo put himself in danger. But he won’t. Not yet. Not until this most recent craziness is over. He doesn’t want Theo to be just another body on the way to the Final Girl.

They discover nothing that night and everyone goes to school the next day.

The reading seems to work but not the way they expected. 

Lydia rushes out of Ms. Finch’s class to take care of Sydney, who they’ve known for years and is pulling her hair out. Immediately after class, Theo tells Scott that Lydia noticed something wrong with the girl. When they track Lydia down, Sydney is fine, but Lydia’s passed out after having a vision of her grandmother in Eichen House. Scott takes her hand, because it’s shaking, while Theo hovers behind them protectively. Scott never wants to see Lydia like this again. 

Afterwards, Theo’s words echo to him as he returns to the classroom to pick up his backpack. His pack _is_ falling apart. He just couldn’t see it because he’s too close to it. People are dying, his friends are hurting, and here he is wasting his energy on trying to pass a class to get into a college he may not even be smart enough to get into and probably can’t afford to begin with. 

When he gives Mrs. Finch the drop form, he feels like he’s stabbing himself in the stomach. Ironically, he knows what that really feels like. The teacher is all concerned, as if she hasn’t been giving him subtle hints that he should drop the class. He starts to tell her why he’s dropping, but she doesn’t understand. She can’t. No one really can. 

He’s the alpha. He’s supposedly this powerful supernatural creature who is capable of protecting everyone in this town, but there are deranged scientists killing people at will and his only lead is a psychoactive novel that gives people terrifying hallucinations. Everything – Theo, Kira, Stiles, the Doctors, the chimera, whoever is stealing the bodies – is happening all at once and he doesn’t know what to do and it’s too much. He can’t breathe.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t breathe. 

_Mom. Where’s Roxy?_

**********

Scott stares at the inhaler in his hand. Would he have died if Liam hadn’t brought it to him? Scott doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why the book brought back memories of the dog he had when he was eight. He doesn’t know why it made him relive that day all over again.

Theo comes to ask him if he’s okay – he’s the only one to do it. Stiles doesn’t even call – and Scott tries to pass the attack off as psychosomatic. It has to be, right? He’s a werewolf. They can’t have asthma attacks. 

Or can they? The Bite was supposed to have cured Erica’s epilepsy, and she had an attack under the right conditions. Maybe he’s reached his limit. Maybe he’s cracked under the pressure.

He turns to Theo and asks him what he needed, and Theo tries to pass it off as nothing. Scott can’t fail someone else. He can’t just stand there while people need him and do nothing. He’s done that too often. He pushes Theo to tell him what’s wrong. He owes Theo that much.

Theo talks to him, unsure and awkward. No, Theo confides in him. He’s coming to Scott looking for leadership. He explains about overhearing Kira speak in her sleep during the time when they were supposed to be watching out for each other. Thinking fast, he’d recorded the words and found a website to translate them. 

The words – their meaning – go right to the heart of what Scott’s been trying to avoid for days and days, ever since the club and Lucas.

_You really have to learn, Scott. You really have to learn not to trust a fox._

Kira has been saying that she is the messenger of death in a language she doesn’t speak. Her fox spirit is taking action without her being aware of it. It knows things she doesn’t; it does things that she doesn’t intend or want.

 _Know why? ‘Cause they’re tricksters._

It feels the same. It feels the same as when Stiles couldn’t remember what he was doing, when he wrote instructions for a serial killer on a chalkboard, or when he was planting bombs and arrow traps and sabotaging electrical equipment.

_They’ll fool you. They’ll fool everyone._

“I don’t know if I can trust her anymore.” 

It’s what he’s been afraid of since the moment he saw the fox spirit point out the belt under his bed. That Kira isn’t Kira anymore, and the signs are unmistakable.

Right on cue, the electricity fritzes. 

Scott tracks down the source of the noise to the basement and then to the hospital. Theo follows him without question and without complaint. It is suddenly natural to feel Theo right behind him. It feels right. It’s a good thing.

But Scott can’t spend too much time on what that means, because the Pathologist decides that now is the best time to kill him.


	3. Chapter 3

Scott stares at the body on the table. 

“Do you know him?”

“His name was Josh.” Scott feels like he’s making a list. If he made a list of all the people who died because of his decisions since he became a werewolf, how long would that list be? “He was a junior.”

Cora’s voice echoes in Scott’s ears accusing him of only being good at finding the bodies back in junior year. The more things change, the more things stay the same. 

“Which one did it? Was it the one with the cane?”

“Yeah.” Theo says this heavily, as if he was just beginning to understand what he signed on for. Scott fights the urge to tell him to run. He can’t save his old friends, but he could save someone new from this … existence.

Stiles is a knot of misery just five feet away from him. He can smell the blood on Stiles. He can hear his heart beating like it’s about to burst out of his chest. He can smell something else on Stiles as well, something foul. Peter’s voice leers at him from the past: _Deception has a particularly acrid scent._

Scott rejects that immediately. Stiles must be upset that they couldn’t save Josh. If Theo was lying or mistaken, Stiles would tell him immediately. Scott feels – he _knows_ – that he can rely on Stiles to tell him the truth. Stiles would deceive almost anyone if he felt it was important enough, but Stiles would never lie to him.

All three of them discuss how to use this opportunity to find the person taking the bodies. Theo volunteers, because it’s not as if he had big plans this weekend. 

Scott feels the guilt immediately, though for two very different reasons. The first is that he’s sucked another person into this morass. Theo wants to be with them, but he doesn’t really understand what he’s signed up for. Watching corpses over the weekend is light duty for the McCall Pack.

The second is that Scott doesn’t protest or refuse Theo’s volunteering. He wants to, but he doesn’t, because he needs help. He needs people like Theo so he can get things done and protect people. Scott makes the decision again to put someone in harm’s way, and he swallows down the bile.

 _It’s inevitable_ , Scott thinks to himself as Stiles and Theo formulate the body-sitting plans. In time, Scott will catch that same haunted look on Theo’s face that he catches on Stiles when Stiles thinks he’s not looking at him. He’ll see the same grim determination that’s etched on Lydia’s face beneath the perfect make-up. Theo will not laugh or smile as much he does, just as Kira has stopped laughing or smiling as much as she once did. 

And this will happen all because Scott McCall couldn’t tell Theo Raeken that he didn’t want his help. 

Liam calls them, and Scott and Stiles go to help Hayden because, of course, the girl that Liam has slowly been falling in love with has to be a chimera. She’s scared, and Liam’s scared, and Scott wants to protect both of them. But he also sees an opportunity – it pops into his head the moment they start scheming about where to protect her. They decide they’ll hide her in the school.

Sometimes Scott thinks he’s as big a monster as Peter. Because at least Peter, at his most manipulative, always played to his victims’ self-interest. Scott’s different. He gets to be the Noble Hero and tell people that it’s the right thing to do to put their lives in danger. At the same time, the disappointment on Kira’s face when she realizes he doesn’t want her at the school makes Scott feel like he’s tied to Araya’s chair once again. He protests, feebly, slowly, and she sees right through him. 

He still leaves though. It’s Noble Hero Time.

Scott studies the locker room for the tenth time as Hayden stands in front of the mirror wondering what she is. Liam says the right thing, the gentlest thing, and at that moment Scott is so proud of Liam. Liam deserves this. He deserves to feel the overwhelming rush of that perfect moment, to feel the power of it making him light as air, whether it comes from _Because I Love You_ or _You’re Hayden._ They’re the same words, really.

Scott is so busy thinking about the past and thinking about Stiles and Theo alone at the Animal Clinic, that he doesn’t even notice Liam check out the bag of chains. Scott brought them as a chance, as a Hail Mary pass, because he has no idea what to do tomorrow. 

Liam gets in his face over it. Scott could have lied, but he shouldn’t lie – he shouldn’t have to lie – so he doesn’t. Can’t Liam see that they’re in over their heads? That they have no answers but that it doesn’t matter because there’s no one else to do this! Hayden’s looking like she's been punched her in the gut, and everything was going well and now it’s not. They want answers from him and he doesn’t have them. 

Frustration overwhelms him. Liam is shrieking and Lydia is judging and Hayden is looking like he’s the one who turned her into the chimera, and he is the alpha and he has to do something, and this is the only thing that he can think of to do!

“Someone has to do something, so someone has to be the bait!” He shouts at his beta. Scott doesn’t shout often and it sounds strange to his own ears. It echoes throughout the locker room, but the echo is garbled. To Scott, it’s become _I can if they’re willing!_

He volunteers to go get Hayden’s kidney medicine to make it up to both of them but also to get out of there, if only for a little while. It’s an illusion that he’s casting on himself, Scott knows. Going for a walk doesn’t get you out of your responsibilities, following a leash on the floor doesn’t dismiss your fears. And his greatest fear is this: he’s going to get everyone killed. 

When Kira stabs him through the back, it feels like prescient justice. This is for all his failures.

After Mason frees him from the Doctors’ spell, he finds that they’ve taken Liam and Hayden. The world closes in on itself.

**********

Scott runs through the Preserve. Sometimes, he even falls down on all fours, and he hasn’t done that for like a year.

He is not thinking straight. He knows that. Ironically, it’s the only clear thought he has in his head, as he nearly runs headlong into a tree. He’d lost their scent an hour ago. Trying to find it by acting like a rabid dog is not going to help anyone, but he can’t stop running.

He’s losing pieces of himself as he runs. Lessons learned fly out of his memory. He tells himself this is not Oak Creek. Oak Creek was a calculated risk taken by people who knew the dangers. This was his call. If Liam dies …

_If Liam dies …_

The howl is ripped out of him, booming across the Preserve with all the power he can put behind it. He’s sure he’s scared all the dogs in Beacon Hills. He’s sure people are looking up and wonder what that sound could possibly be. They know enough now not to investigate.

He tells Malia that Liam could roar back if he heard it. He doesn’t mention that Liam could only roar back if he was still alive. His lungs are beginning to burn, like embers buried beneath soot. Eventually, Scott stops listening, he stops running, because there was no answer. 

Kira has killed someone. Or she hasn’t killed someone. She doesn’t know; she was sleepwalking and Scott is going out of his mind with this new crisis. His mom discovered the body, spread over their kitchen table. Was it a message to him? Is the fox taunting him because he didn’t tell Kira? Is he losing her so soon after he told her he loved her? There’s no answer.

But there is an answer. She asks him if Scott thinks she did it and he hesitates and it is right there on her face. She knows now that he doesn’t trust her. Kira makes him feel loved, makes him feel strong, and he’s lost her because he’s scared. _Foxes and wolves tend not to get along._ How do they come back from this?

He’s lost Liam and he’s lost Kira, and there’s no answer.

But there is an answer. Corey is a chimera. He was taken and experimented on, and that means he has to have been at the Doctors’ home base. The home base where they would have taken Liam and Hayden. All he has to do is remember it, but Corey is struggling through the second chapter of that damn book and there is no time. 

Scott needs an answer _now,_ so he takes it. 

He can feel it the moment he takes his claws out of Corey’s neck; everyone disapproves. He can hear Corey’s heartbeat, he can see Corey move, and so he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. 

Everyone who disagrees with it can just fucking cope. People’s lives are on the line, and if he has to get his hands a little bloody, well, everybody fucking wanted him to be alpha. 

Sitles, finally around when Scott needs him, helps him identify the picture he got out of Corey’s mind. It’s the water treatment plant. He’s on his way. Malia and Mason jump to help him. Good. At least some people understand what’s going on. 

But it takes all Scott’s self-control not to snap at Stiles. He’s attacking Mason for wanting to go and for not having ‘super wolf powers’ and the hypocrisy is so astounding that it makes Scott’s skin flush. If anyone had suggested Stiles stay behind because he didn’t have ‘wolf powers’, Stiles would have exploded into a ball of red hot rage thoroughly mixed with his standard woe-is-me-nobody-loves-me theatrics. Scott knows it. The sheriff knows it. The pack knows it. The whole world knows it.

Scott doesn’t know when that on top of being Protector of Beacon Hills he got saddled with being in charge of Stiles’ Sense of Self-Worth. It’s certainly isn’t a two-way street. Stiles is always quick to help but when and only when Stiles feels like being there to help. Scott still remembers 17 unanswered text messages because Stiles was brooding over being beaten up by an old man. Scott wishes he could take a few days off every time someone hurts him, but there aren’t that many days in the week. 

Ever since their most recent trip to Eichen House, Stiles obviously hasn’t felt like being there. “Well, if you’re not going,” Scott settles on, struggling to keep the venom out of his voice. “I could use the help.”

He can hear the judgment in Stiles’ voice about Corey. It’s always the same. Stiles has standards for everyone else that he insists on – _So that means you don’t have a choice anymore. It means you have to do something_ – but no one ever gets to insist that _Stiles_ do anything let alone have anything resembling standards. He can question your motives, he can mock your abilities, and he can criticize your results – especially if it amuses Stiles – but he always has an excuse why he can’t do the right thing.

And God help you if you fail to live up to these standards, because being friends with Stiles Stilinski means he gets to hurt you whenever he feels like it, emotionally, physically, or both; it’s dealer’s choice.

And, of course, Stiles is going to place his father before Liam. He can’t lose him, can he? Even though his fucking father has an entire fucking police force with him, enough fucking cops so he can arrest Kira when the sheriff knows that the Doctors are messing with people’s minds. If the sheriff was there at this moment, Scott would see if he had enough fucking cops to arrest Scott for punching Mr. Stilinksi right in his face.

Everyone _knows_ that Stiles can’t lose his Dad, but Scott can lose Liam, right? Scott can lose everyone by doing the right thing, by fighting to save people, by getting up and going on even after a girl died in Scott’s goddamn arms, but Stiles can’t be asked to put anything before his grown-ass and fully-armed father.

Scott suddenly wants Theo with him. The reality is that Theo wants to be in the pack, even when it’s inconvenient. Theo listens to him even when Scott is not giving Theo what he wants. It’s amazing to Scott right now that the only person who thinks Scott’s competent can’t be in his pack because his oldest friend, who doesn’t have time to help Scott right now, has a funny goddamn feeling in his toe.

Theo won’t come, though, because Theo wants to protect Corey from the Doctors. Scott could be angry, but he isn’t. Finally, someone is willing to risk something to help and not just tell Scott what he’s doing wrong.

He doesn’t have time for any more of that bullshit. He doesn’t have time for Lydia telling him to slow down. She was off playing footsie with Parrish while the Doctors were executing anyone who didn’t meet their criteria without hesitation. He tells her as such. 

She scolds him for possibly hurting Corey. And if he doesn’t get Liam and Hayden back, if he doesn’t figure out a way to stop the Doctors, what will Corey’s fate be then? Everyone wants him to solve all the goddamn problems now, but they only want him to solve them if it doesn’t cost them anything. 

He doesn’t have time for that. It has to be the water-treatment tunnels, but once he confirms that the pipes are the same as he saw in Corey’s mind, all he does is wander around like a rat in a maze. Because it is a maze, and there’s no sign of Liam, and no sign of Hayden, and no sign of the Doctors.

His breath leaves him when he realizes that they’re lost. They’ve lost. He’s not going to be able to find Liam; Liam couldn’t call back. He sinks down to the floor of the tunnel, and he feels the burn blaze up into a raging fire in his lungs.

He won’t use his inhaler. He won’t. It’s not fair for him to do so. Liam and Hayden are dead.

Mason helps him up and urges him to keep going, but it’s useless. He’s failed everyone. He hurt Corey for no reason. He lied to Kira for no reason. Stiles and Lydia are right to treat him like crap. He walks the tunnels like a zombie.

When he gets home, he finds that Theo has found and rescued Liam and Hayden. He doesn’t cry. He gives Theo a hug, but his heart is not in it. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Theo. Not anymore. Theo has saved every single one of them. If he meant them ill will, he could have let Stiles die in a fire or done any number of things that would have hurt the pack. But no, Theo braved the Doctors’ lair and was fried by electricity to bring Liam and Hayden home.

It’s that Scott doesn’t deserve the hug. He panicked. He overreacted. He lied. He used people, and he didn’t care. Kira’s gone. She drove away because he couldn’t help her, didn’t know how to help her. Hell, he probably hurt her by not telling her what he saw earlier. Scott watches the rest of the pack give Theo a welcome, a welcome he deserves, and he wants to cry. He wants to burst into tears over what he’s done and what he failed to do. 

But Theo’s moment shouldn’t be overshadowed by how much a flop of an alpha Scott’s become. 

He goes up to his room and sits in the dark. His mother comes in and he tells her his fears, but she doesn’t say anything.

There’s nothing to say.


	4. Chapter 4

Scott stands in the back room of the animal clinic, inhaler in his hand, studying it as if it is some sort cursed artifact. While he does so, he lays the present situation all out for Theo. Theo has earned a place in the pack, but if he is going to be a part of it, Scott is going to be damn well sure that Theo knows everything he needs to.

He talks about his own weakness. He talks about the fact that he doesn’t have an amazing plan to defeat the Dread Doctors. They haven’t seen any new chimera for five days, but he knows there will be more. He talks about the distance growing between him and the senior members of his pack. He talks about the silence, and the loneliness, and the fear, and the frustration, not just his but everyone’s. He talks about the asthma eating at his foundations. 

“And all I can think about is how good am I going to be if I can’t even breathe?”

“It sounds like you’re trying to apologize.”

The truth be told, that is exactly what Scott is doing. Theo came here to be part of something good. It’s not a sinister motive. Doesn’t everyone want to be part of something good? What Theo found instead was baseless suspicion, dissolution, incompetence, and failure. Why shouldn’t Scott apologize for being a disappointment?

He says as much to Theo. Scott doesn’t know what he wanted Theo to say back, but it turns out that Theo says the one thing that Scott needed to hear. 

“Scott, I’m with you.”

Scott hopes that’s true. Stiles had said that Scott still had him at the end of sophomore year, but where has he been as Scott has been drowning under the responsibility? Lydia had pledged her help at the memorial for the losses at the school, but all she has done this semester is judge him and flirt with Parrish. Malia had pointed out that he could handle things better with her when they went to talk to Peter, but where was she now?

Scott was sure they meant it when they said those things, but they also said it when Scott was triumphant. When he had saved Jackson and defeated Gerard, when he was becoming a True Alpha, and when he had rescued Derek from Kate. But now? When he was broken and defeated and a failure, where were they? 

Busy. Uninterested. Elsewhere.

However, Theo is here, and Scott feels almost light-headed in his presence. Why? Because Theo wants to be here, and it’s important to Scott that someone wants to be there when things are falling apart. It makes him breathe easier.

When they’re sitting in class and Theo says they have something they need to talk about, Scott is ready to hear it. Theo hasn’t asked for a single thing except to be part of the pack, even while he’s been everywhere, helping and saving actual lives. If there is something he needs to talk about, then Scott is going to talk with him. He can do that at least.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t get the chance to be the person he wants to be. Corey is dying. He’s lying there on the stretcher, and there’s black and silver all down the front of his chest, and the ambulance people are doing all the things they would do to normal people which will do nothing for Corey because he’s not human. Mason is standing there covered with black blood, and he’s stunned. Scott wants to say something to Liam’s friend, something like ‘This isn’t your fault’ or ‘We’ll save him,’ but he’s out of time again. He has to get to the hospital, because Corey is a failure and that means the Doctors will come for him.

That doesn’t mean Scott knows what he is going to do when the Doctors come. The Pathologist almost killed Scott by himself, and then the Doctors disabled him at the school with an illusion he couldn’t break. What’s the point of fighting them just to lose?

The point is this is what he does. This is what he has to do.

On the drive to the hospital, Scott tries to distract himself from that reality by asking Theo what he wanted to speak to him about in the class. Theo starts hemming and hawing, but the pack has to start talking again. If Theo starts editing himself, their … friendship or Alpha-Beta relationship or whatever the hell it is … will die stillborn. So Scott persists; he almost demands that Theo talk to him.

Scott regrets that immediately.

In the glove department is a wrench. It’s covered in blood. Scott knows whose it is before Theo speaks, because he can smell Stiles’ scent all over it. 

Stiles has been lying to him. He told Scott that the wound on his back came from the hood of the jeep. Stiles has been hiding things from him. He never said anything about getting into a fight with Donovan at the library even though the pack and the entire BHPD have been looking for Donovan.

Theo is upset. He’s crying, because he knows this is going to seem like he’s telling on Stiles, but this isn’t like breaking a window with a baseball. As Theo tells his story about Donovan’s death, Scott has to know all of it. Theo talks about the savagery of the assault, and he repeats the threat that Donovan made against the sheriff, even though he wasn’t there the first time Donovan made those threats. He’s horrified. 

“That’s not possible.” It's the last call of a drowning man before the waters close over his head.

Like a lightning strike, Scott suddenly knows – for the first time ever – that it’s possible. He’d seen Stiles go for the headshot before against the twins. He’s seen Stiles leap to killing as a solution again and again, no matter how flippant Stiles made it seem. He’s been the target of Stiles’ rage when his father is endangered. And Scott’s watched, foolishly, heedlessly, as Stiles has become more violent and more paranoid in recent weeks.

Scott declined to intervene, because he was too irritated with Stiles’ behavior to grapple with it. Look at what that has wrought.

It’s is completely possible that Stiles, pushed just as hard and as far as Scott feels he is being pushed, decided to end a threat to his father in a permanent way. Stiles is the clever one, but Scott isn’t a brick, no matter how often Stiles teases him.

Conviction worms its way through his mind for the rest of the trip. It gnaws at his insides as they find Corey’s dead body, casually stabbed and discarded as so much useless meat. It scratches the back of his eyeballs as he fights the Dread Doctors for Liam and Hayden. It trembles in his hands as he drives through the rain to the animal clinic.

“Hey, sorry …” Stiles starts out as if everything hasn’t changed. “I had trouble starting the jeep again. The thing’s barely hanging on. I couldn’t get in touch with Malia or Lydia.” Stiles sees that Scott’s not moving or talking or really even listening all that much. ”Scott?”

There’s a moment – a brilliant, diamond-bright possibility – where Scott knows he could just hand him the wrench with a smile and say “You lost this.” Where Scott could pretend that he hadn’t heard what Theo told him, where he could pretend that the last eighteen months hadn’t worn what he just this second realized was the most precious thing he has ever possessed in the world down to the nub. There’s a moment where he could just … forget. 

But he can’t. That’s not how he works anymore. He’s the Protector of Beacon Hills, and that means _everyone_ in Beacon Hills, even low-life criminals like Donovan Donatti -- even _his_ life means something. Even Donovan doesn’t deserve to get murdered because some warped scientists turned him into a monster.

If he had ever been able to treat someone’s life as worth less than his, Lydia would be dead. Derek would be dead. Isaac would be dead. Stiles would be dead. They were worth defending. So is Donovan.

Even if it will cost him everything to hold the person who did it accountable.

He is the True Alpha. He didn’t want to be, but he is. And that means something. That has to mean something, or he’s been running around the city like a lunatic picking fights that were none of his business. So he brings out the wrench.

The look on Stiles’ face is as if Scott had struck him with it. The argument goes as arguments with Stiles usually go when Stiles knows he’s wrong. Scott has mapped it out before and he does so now.

Stiles’ first tactic is deflection: “Well, he was going to kill my dad. Huh? Was I supposed to just let him?”

Scott has to keep Stiles on track, because Scott knows that the sheriff wasn’t in any immediate danger. If the sheriff had been there, there wouldn’t be a problem. Scott knows that Stiles isn’t making a plea for pre-emptive killing, he’s trying to change the topic from what he did to what Donovan might have done.

Scott wishes the sheriff was _here._ Why does Scott get to deal with this? He already knows the answer: he’s the alpha.

Stiles’ second tactic is shifting the blame: “Yeah, well, I can’t do what you can Scott. I know you wouldn’t have done it. You’d probably would have just figured something out, right?”

There’s nothing much to say to this. The fact is that whatever Scott would or wouldn’t have done, he’s not the one who did it. He’s not the one who lied. He’s not the one who hid it. Scott admits he’d try.

His gut clenches, because that tactic always stings. Scott remembers all the times that Stiles has told him that he was always right, all the times he’s insinuated that Scott was stupid and that his plans suck and that Scott should always listen to him for the sake of his wolvelihood, and suddenly, Stiles is claiming _incompetence._

His third and last tactic, as it always is, is anger: “Yeah, because you’re Scott McCall!” he roars, angry and accusing. “You’re the True Alpha. Guess what? All of us can’t be True Alphas!”

Scott never wanted this. He never wanted to be expected to have all the answers. He never wanted to be some form of superhero! All he wanted was to get a good night’s sleep before practice so he could make first line.

“Some of us have to make mistakes!” As if Scott didn’t watch Kira drive away in the middle of the night to an uncertain future.

“Some of us have to get our hands a little bloody sometimes!” As if Scott didn’t have to clean Corey’s blood out from under his fingernails!

“Some of us are human!” 

Sometimes, in the dark times of the night, Scott wishes he were Peter. If he were like Peter, then he’d start clapping, right about now, because Stiles has done it. He’s turned the fact that Stiles killed someone and hid it and lied about it into a referendum on Scott’s humanity. Mission accomplished!

Does the jury have a verdict?

Yes, we find the defendant, Scott McCall, guilty of Not Being Human.

There’s only one way to make up for this. Scott will keep being everyone's Personal Savior until he gets it right or he dies. Either way, just as good.

There are other words, but they’re meaningless because Stiles doesn’t mean them. He doesn’t want Scott to believe him. If he wanted Scott to believe him, he would have told Scott weeks ago. He doesn’t want Scott to tell him what to do. He wants Scott to make this go away, so they can go back to the way it used to be, where Stiles got to determine what’s worth talking about.

Scott would love that, but it’s not possible. You can’t take a stand when you win and then retreat from it when you lose. If it’s wrong for Chris Argent to try to kill Scott because he’s a dangerous creature that might hurt his daughter, it’s wrong for Stiles to kill Donovan because he’s a dangerous creature that might hurt his dad. 

He says as much. If Stiles doesn’t think he’s human, if Stiles doesn’t believe in him, if Stiles wants to blame this on Scott, then let him go talk to his dad. It’s the sheriff’s problem now.

Scott goes into the animal clinic and tells Liam to go to hell.

Liam stares at him, a look of betrayal seething on his face. Off to the side, Theo looks stunned. But Liam is a beta, and Scott hasn’t taught him all that much of the Bite. Theo is an omega. He never had a real pack or a real mentor.

He can see why people think the Bite works as some sort of medical miracle. It can be, but the transformation process isn’t easy. It could just as easily kill Hayden as save her life. Gerard himself had to move quickly to secure the Bite before his cancer made him too weak to survive it. 

As Scott looks at her, it will definitely kill Hayden. She’s barely conscious, her pulse is weak, and she’s burning up. She’s in critical condition and Scott’s not going to Bite her just because it’s better than doing nothing. 

He gives his explanation to Liam, but it doesn’t satisfy him because it wouldn’t have satisfied Scott. One of the worst lessons Scott ever had to learn was that you can try and try and try and still not win. Derek taught him that. Oak Creek taught him that. 

Theo brings him back to earth with his comment that Hayden’s getting worse. He does it without judgment, without spite. Once upon a time, it would have been Stiles doing that. But Stiles isn’t here now. Stiles doesn’t deserve to be here.

Scott pushes the thought away from him. He’ll deal with those emotions later. He calls his mother. No matter the unspoken problems between them, she’s a great battlefield medic. This is a battlefield, he can make no mistake about that. 

She starts Hayden on chelation therapy. Liam is near to going out of control and hurts his mother. Scott’s never wanted to use brute force on Liam. He’s never wanted to frighten Liam. That’s the sign of a bad alpha. It takes everything he’s got not to throw his beta up against a wall.

But he’s better than that. Scott walks into the outer room leaving Liam with Hayden and his mother. It’s a show of trust.

Theo follows him. 

They sit down in the chairs together. Theo doesn’t hesitate to get close to him, unconsciously. Scott is aware of it. It’s comforting to have someone there. Scott doesn’t pretend anymore. He likes how much Theo likes him. He likes it a lot. 

It says something for his friends, that – aside from Kira and that’s entirely his fault – the only time they get together recently is for pack business. He knows what was wrong with Stiles now. Stiles was lying to him. Hiding things from him. But even then, he’s barely seen Malia for weeks. Lydia is always with Parrish. Liam is mad at him for not being perfect. 

The connecting tissue there is his function. He’s their leader, but he’s no longer quite sure that he is their friend. Can you be both? He hopes so.

Theo points out that they’re going to have trouble with Liam. 

“He’s sixteen and in love. First love. Remember what that’s like?”

Scott remembers. He hasn’t told Theo about Allison. He doesn’t want to talk about Allison to anyone. But the memories come hard and fast. He doesn’t know exactly what Hayden means to Liam, but he can imagine. Allison, when they were together – and even after they weren’t – was his strength. In those first horrific few weeks, he needed something outside of himself to focus on. He needed something that was going to be his, and something that was immune to werewolves and werewolf hunters and all that bullshit. Allison wanting to be with him and him wanting to be with Allison meant transcending what everyone single other person was telling him he had to be, had to do.

Maybe he should’ve talked to Liam before now, but when they had time, before any of this nonsense started, Liam wasn’t even seeing Hayden. His beta hadn’t shared any of his history with Hayden. 

Too late now.

“Trust me. I remember.”

As strong as Allison made him, she also made him stubborn. She may have made him a little inattentive when inattention could have gotten him killed. So few things are unalloyed good or unalloyed bad.

Take Theo sitting next to him. Everything is terrible right now. The pack is in tatters. He is more alone now than he has been since the first night he transformed, sitting in the bathtub. But Theo is there. Theo isn’t perfect, but he’s there and he wants to help and he’s supportive and right now he is everything Scott needs.

“You need your pack.”

“I’m not sure I have one.” 

The thought that comes next is sickening. For a moment, for the space of a single breath, Scott is okay with that. Because as arrogant as Derek made it sound when he crowed over Peter’s burnt corpse, Scott’s the alpha now. If Stiles wants to deceive him, if Malia wants to avoid him, if Liam wants to be mad at him, and if Lydia wants to go solo, that’s fine. Because there’s no pack without an alpha. He’s got Theo, and he can build himself a new pack.

The next moment that thought is gone. Scott burns it, tears it, grinds it into the dirt. It’s the easy path. It’s the selfish path. It’s the path of all the people who Scott has stood up to and said “You can’t treat people like that.” He’ll help Stiles, no matter what he’s done. He will make it up to Kira. He’ll work with Malia, he’ll be patient with Lydia, and he’ll earn Liam’s trust back. He’ll work and work and work until he fixes what’s broken. Because that’s who he is. That’s who he wants to be. 

And Theo will help him do it.

“Let me talk to them. Let me see what I can do, okay?”

Yes. Theo will help him do it. He’ll be a better Scott McCall. Everything will be all right.

“Theo. Thank you.”

**********

Hayden is dying. There is nothing that can stop that now. She’s so weak that Scott won’t even try the Bite. It’s not a fifty-fifty shot. It’s not even a one in ten shot, which are the odds Scott gave it when Liam first proposed it. It’s a one-in-ten thousand shot, and Scott’s simply not going to do it, because medical care still has a better chance of working than it does.

It’s not fair that Liam demands it of him. Scott realizes that Liam’s not thinking clearly because of the Super Moon, but he still can form sentences. He still knows that if Scott bit Hayden, even to save her, and she died, it would haunt Scott for the rest of her life.

Fuck Peter and people who think like Peter. He took the mantle of alpha up because he had to, not because he wanted to. No one should ask that of him. And if they do, well that’s tough. Scott would Bite her if he thought it work work, but it won’t.

It won’t.

But he can make sure that Hayden, if she has to die, has her final wish. He’ll find Valerie and he’ll bring her back if he has to pick her up and carry her here himself.

He can feel the Super Moon while he is driving. When he was first Bitten, he didn’t understand what it was doing. He thought it put aggression in his head. He thought it made everyone look like someone he had to tear apart with his bare hands. But it didn’t. If a werewolf was pure and without hatred, the moon would do nothing.

Scott could never remember what he had been thinking when he had tried to kill Stiles in the locker room so long ago. Stiles had told him how he had clambered along the rafters of the locker room like a tiger at the zoo. But over the years, as he thought about it, he figured out why he wanted to kill Stiles. He had blamed (still blamed) Stiles for dragging him out into the woods. He hadn’t said it; he would never say it, but the moon doesn’t care about the lies you tell yourself.

When he had stalked Jackson and Allison, he had been jealous. Of course Allison would want someone like Jackson. Jackson wasn’t a werewolf, but he was gorgeous, athletic, and popular. Why would someone like Allison settle for Scott when she could have him? He had kept that opinion buried deep, and it only came out when he lost control.

Tonight, the moon was weighing down on him, but he was strong enough, he could take it. He anchored himself, and that was the best anchor. He’ll do the right thing. He knows it.

Lydia texts him. It’s urgent. She may have different priorities than he does, but she is pack. She is. And he will honor that bond, no matter what.

He heads for the library.


	5. Chapter 5

“That’s not possible.”

For the second time in a week, Scott says those words to Theo and the feeling is nearly identical. It feels like nothing else than Barrow’s crowbar to the back of his unsuspecting head.

He’s watching Theo handle mountain ash like it’s nothing. A number of ideas chase each other through his mind, each more implausible than the one before it. 

“You’re right. A werewolf shouldn’t be able to touch mountain ash.”

Theo is doing more than touching it. He’s using it.

“You’re a chimera.”

“I’m the First Chimera.”

Theo goes into the usual villain monologue and Scott finds that he can’t really pay attention. He was fooled. They all were fooled. Stiles might have suspected Theo, but he couldn’t prove anything, and he ended up working just as closely with Theo as the rest of them. 

But Scott knows, with a stab of guilty, that he went a step farther than anyone else in the pack did. When Theo boasts about Malia trusting him first, Scott actually feels relieved. Theo doesn’t really understand. Maybe he can’t understand. 

Scott likes him. Scott likes Theo a lot. If Theo had not been a werewolf or if Theo had not wanted to join the pack, Scott would still want to be Theo’s friend. He would still want to hang out with Theo and talk about concerts and sports teams and school dances and maybe taking a summer trip to go surfing. 

It is better this way. If Theo knew that he had fooled Scott that much, there is no telling what Theo could have done. Instead, Theo is boasting.

“And they realized you?” The Dread Doctors are brilliant. They made Scott betray himself.

“They came close with me.” And Scott, even when he should be raging, hears instead the unmistakable pain in those words, and the envy in Theo’s next words. “But we can’t all be perfect. We can’t all be True Alphas.”

Because he has to, he shoves down any empathy he has for Theo and throws himself at the barrier. It repulses him, easily. Scott had been able to break the barrier in the past because he needed to do it. Scott doesn’t know what he needs now.

Theo finishes isolating him from what remains of his pack. Scott doesn’t even know if people would answer his calls for help. It doesn’t matter. Not really.

When Theo walks away chuckling about the Super Moon, Scott understands. The key is Liam. Just like Peter, Theo is going to get Liam to try to kill him and then kill Liam for the alpha power. He wonders how much of Liam’s obsession with giving Hayden the Bite was caused by Theo’s whispers.

Scott hates his life. He’s hated it since Peter hit him, true, but he hates it even more now. Everyone focuses on the benefits that being an alpha werewolf gives him or the benefits it gives others. No one ever realizes how much it ruins him. They don’t think how much being the True Alpha changes how he talks to his parents, what he does with his friends, how he goes to school, what he dreams college will be like. No one gets it, because all anyone ever sees is the power.

He’s trying to burst through the barrier. He’s talking himself up, because he knows he can’t be caught here. Liam will be coming, and Theo’s going to have him all twisted up, and …

He doesn’t trust Liam. He doesn’t trust anybody.

He climbs to the roof. It’s a silly idea, but beating himself up on the barrier isn’t getting him anywhere. Scott has a vain hope that Liam’s senses will be so screwed up by the Super Moon that he won’t find him here.

He feels his lungs tighten at his failure. All he needs now is to suffer an asthma attack. He is stupid. He is naïve. He is everything that people have called him, yet he knows there is nothing that he could have done to change one single thing. Rage courses through him as he tries to draw medicine from the inhaler. He smashes it. 

Poison. Theo has poisoned him. In more ways than one.

Scott turns around and Liam is there, angry, transformed, eyes blazing. He looks like Judgment.

**********

By the time Mason gets him to his feet so they can hobble out of this place and get to safety, Scott’s rage has disappeared into thin air. All there is left is … he can’t say nothing. There’s something left.

It’s a fallow field. The dirt is gray and blasted. There are stands of dead plants in little clumps. That clump is his friendship with Stiles. That clump is Liam’s trust in him. Everything’s dead. Everything’s rotting. In the middle of the field is the Nemeton, because, at this moment, it’s the only thing keeping him here. 

Scott turned the thing on. If he ran away, it would still keep bringing things here to prey on the people who don’t run. He can’t do that to them. 

They don’t even make the door. Theo comes in, furious and frustrated, and backhands Mason across the face. Mason, of all people, doesn’t deserve this. Scott hopes Mason is okay. He looks up into Theo’s eyes as the chimera seethes.

“I should have stayed. I should have made sure.”

Scott feels oddly calm. He wonders now that the final mask is off he understands Theo more than anyone else. Theo is scared. He moved all the pieces on the board to exactly where he wanted them, and he’s still not winning. And if you’re not winning, you’re losing. At the peak of his triumph, Theo is scared of losing everything. Ironically, Scott is not scared of that. You can’t be scared of something that’s already happened.

“Because now you have to kill me yourself.”

Theo tries to claim Scott’s pack for his own because if he can take something, anything from Scott, the fear might go away. But Scott only feels pity for Theo. They’re the same. They want something they can’t have. Theo wants to be exceptional, to be so exceptional that people love him. Scott wants people not to leave, but you can’t keep people from doing that any more than you can make them love you. It doesn’t matter if you try to hold them in your life by being a True Alpha or by being the First Chimera, if you try to hold them by kindness or power. People are in your life for a little bit of time, some longer than others, but they leave: Lydia, Malia, Derek, Stiles, his dad, Allison, even Theo. They always leave. 

Theo can’t understand it. He can’t understand why power isn’t enough. Even with Scott at his mercy, he tries to blame it on the Doctors, saying he’s not real, he’s been cheated. He doesn’t get it. Scott tries one more time to make him see.

“Because you’re barely even human.”

Then there’s the dark.

**********

His mother brings him back. Scott’s not sure why he comes back.

She stands at the food of his bed and tells him that he has to get back up and do it all over again. _He has to._

He wants to ask her why. He died alone on the floor of a library at the hands of his own beta and someone who pretended to be his friend. Stiles betrayed him. Kira’s gone. Allison’s dead. You would think he would need a more compelling reason to stand up and go through all that shit again than _he has to._

He will, he thinks. Even though here’s an open hole in his chest and he has no friends and he has no clue what to do against Theo or the Doctors or the Beast, but he’ll get back up and go out and fight. Because Derek’s right – he’s just a stupid teenager.

When his mother goes to the hospital to help take care of Stiles, he tries to get emotionally and physically ready to be there for his best friend. When he passes out on the stairs, he dreams of Theo. 

**********

It’s pretty surreal, Scott thinks. When he told Stiles about regression to the mean, he didn’t think it would be this bad. Deaton had explained that things can't be all bad or all good, but this was ridiculous

Scott is standing at the top of his own stairs. He needs to be close enough to hear Theo’s heart clearly and get his scent. He needs to verify what Theo says to Stiles, when and if Theo finally arrives.

He thinks that there’s a good chance that they’ll fool Theo. Scott’s scent should permeate the house, so Scott should be okay. Even if Theo suspects there's someone else here, it’s not a stretch that Stiles would have someone in the house with him when he talks to Theo, especially if he’s using the McCall house defenses to ‘protect’ him from Theo.

Scott beats down the urge to focus his senses on Stiles. His friend is cold and harsh and distant, as he always is when he thinks he’s been wronged. But right now, Scott doesn’t want to know what Stiles is feeling. Scott doesn’t want to smell the anxiety that has to be there or hear the rise in heartbeat when his friend won’t look him in the eye. 

Scott doesn’t have any idea how long Stiles plans to give him the cold shoulder. Stiles probably wants an apology for Scott for not obeying his instincts about Theo. Stiles would completely miss the irony.

If Stiles wants an apology, he’s going to be waiting a long time. Scott is not responsible for what the villains do, so he’s not going to apologize for the sheriff getting hurt. He has no reason to feel guilty for failing to obey Stiles’ gut instincts when there was not a shred of credible evidence and plenty of shows of good intent from Theo. Theo may have been the most helpful, amiable villain in the history of villains. And Scott’s not going to apologize for assuming the worst about his ‘friend’ when Stiles deceived him for weeks; Stiles can’t lie and then demand that Scott believe him.

Stiles can just assume that Scott apologized by not tearing him in half during the attack in the hospital corridor. Stiles is the cleverest teenager Scott knows (the smartest is Lydia), but he can be really fucking stupid sometimes. The Super Moon was last night, and Scott is still amped up from it. He could have clawed out Stiles’ throat, even while he was half dead. Stiles should have known better.

Theo appears. Scott doesn’t see him, but he knows that scent. He knows his presence. Adrenaline surges through his body, but he has more discipline than to immediately react. 

“It looks like we’re all telling the truth now.” Theo’s trying to get under Stiles’s skin, and perhaps he’s trying to draw anyone else in the house out. 

Theo won’t be able to tell that Scott’s there, unless he’s memorized his heartbeat. Would Theo go that far? 

“Did you really kill my best friend?”

Whether he means it or not, Stiles really sells the question. It’s exactly what Stiles should ask if Scott was actually dead, no matter how much they don’t see eye-to-eye right now.

“Let’s be honest, Stiles. Was he still really your best friend?” 

Scott wants to put the question out of his mind, because it hurts too much. Theo is trying to unsettle Stiles by implying that Scott somehow doesn't deserve Stiles' friendship. Or maybe Theo’s somehow sensed that Scott is present and is trying to get a rise out of him. It doesn’t matter, because it won’t work. Because no matter how angry Stiles is, he would say that they would always be best friends.

Only Stiles doesn’t. 

He changes the subject and Scott has to work hard to focus on listening to Theo’s heartbeat, because there is a part of Scott that wonders how much he can take? Not only does he have to stop Theo and his masters and save the chimera and forgive Liam and rescue Kira and Lydia -- not only does he have to get them back, but he has to take sole responsibility for his and Stiles' friendship. Stiles' silence implies he did nothing wrong.

When they’re done, Theo pushes Stiles down on the staircase. Stiles passes out, yet when Scott tries to help, Stiles pushes him away. Stiles interrogates him until they figure out that another chimera must have hurt the sheriff. They rush out to the car, but then Scott hears the door locks click and the car start.

“I can do the rest myself.” Stiles is going to punish Scott by committing suicide by proxy.

For a moment, just a moment, Scott is tempted to let Stiles go without him. Stiles wants to track down the chimera that gutted his father armed only with a hunch and a bad attitude. Stiles has no idea who this person is or where they could be, but he’s so pissed off at _Scott_ for his father getting hurt that he’s willing to risk his father’s life to get back at him. And if Stiles manages to figure out where this other chimera is and where they could be, he still has to hope the chimera doesn’t pull his pancreas out through his nose. And _then_ , even if Stiles manages to locate his prey and manages not to get seriously, critically injured by that prey, he has to hope that he’s not caught by the Dread Doctors. 

But Scott can’t give in to that urge. He’s not going to let hatred and resentment make his decisions. He’s not going to throw away ten years of friendship because his best friend hid a crime, called him inhuman, tried to attack him when he was half dead, and blames him for his father’s injury which happened while Scott was actually dying half a city away. 

So he begs. He begs Stiles to let him help, but that’s not enough for Stiles. He has to accuse Scott of trusting Theo. 

_Yes, Stiles, I trusted the guy who stuck by me while you were off covering up manslaughter. I trusted the guy who actually cared when my asthma came back or when my girlfriend had to leave. I trusted the guy who saved your life, and my life, and Kira’s life, and every single person in the pack’s life, even your girlfriend’s and your crush’s._

That is what Scott wanted to say, but that will cause Stiles to lash out and run him over, and he already knows what that feels like. So he points out that Stiles trusted the chimera too, or he wouldn’t have made a deal with Theo, but that doesn’t matter because all that matters is the sheriff.

It's hard to put it into words, but what he does manage to say, works.

**********

Scott doesn’t actually see Theo again until Stiles and he go down into the tunnel looking for whatever attacked the communications substation. Stiles and him are better, he guesses, if that’s what you want to call it. Stiles isn’t cold to him, but he is pretending in that way that drives Scott nuts.

Though Scott also understands that they’re both pretending. They need each other, or maybe they think they need each other, so they’re going to avoid talking about what happened. It’s the way it’s always worked between them. But it’s getting pretty thin. Scott can now imagine a day when he doesn’t want Stiles in his life.

It’s a little frightening.

Stiles gets dropped by Tracy while they’re trying to take photographs of a message the Doctors left. So Scott, his chest aching, has to fight Tracy and Josh. He’s surprised by the attack, but they’re amateurs, and he has learned enough in the last two years to redirect Tracy into Josh. He’s proud of himself for a second until he realizes they’re supposed to be dead!

Scott knows someone else is present and he roars in an attempt to intimidate whoever it is. Corey literally appears, since, well, it seems he can turn invisible. Why not? Corey’s no more of a fighter than Tracy or Josh, and Scott’s surprised he didn’t run. Theo is not only surprised, but unimpressed.

“I found some new friends.” Theo quips. “I don’t take rejection well.”

Scott bites his tongue. The first thing he wants to say is that Scott didn’t reject him, but he’s afraid of how that would sound. Whiny? Treacherous? Scott doesn’t know.

Theo surprises him by offering an olive branch. He’s broken with the Doctors, and he’s offering an alliance against whatever it is that they’ve created. It’s persuasive, save for the fact that Theo is pretending the way Stiles is pretending: that what they did doesn’t matter, because Scott is somehow supposed to forget the hole in his chest just as much he’s supposed to forget being thrown up against a wall.

Scott doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t trust himself to say anything. He certainly doesn’t trust Theo. He’s not mad at Theo though, just like he’s no longer mad at Stiles. They’re almost the same. They simply want different things from him. 

Scott’s not sure he can give either of them what they want. That’s a little frightening, too.


	6. Chapter 6

He gets Kira back from the Skin-walkers. It’s anticlimactic from his end; all he did was drive for seventeen hours to the desert and roar at what must have been three of them, but Kira and Noshiko assure him that it was well-timed and very much appreciated. Kira tells him she loves him back. 

She isn’t fixed. Noshiko warns them both in no uncertain terms. Since she didn’t pass the Skin-walkers’ test, they didn’t help her. Kira and the fox are still unbalanced, and Scott will have to keep one eye open, but this time he won’t hide. He promises her. He promises himself.

It’s enough.

He gets Stiles back, too, on that trip, in a way. Stiles tells him the real story of what happened to Donovan. Scott could see it in his mind’s eye; he could watch Stiles twist Donovan’s blood and strangling paranoia and the poisoned memories of his time possessed by the Nogitsune together until he forged a waking nightmare for himself. When Scott asks him why Stiles couldn’t simply talk to him, Stiles argues that it was just the way Scott had been looking at him. Scott doesn’t understand how that stopped Stiles; it had never stopped him before. 

He has Stiles back, but it will never be the same. Scott needs his brother, but he will never fully trust him again. He can’t, now that he knows that Stiles doesn’t think their friendship is strong enough to endure the truth.

It’ll have to be enough.

Malia brings Dr. Deaton back to him. She went to kill her mother and she was betrayed by Theo. Scott isn’t surprised that she tried; he had predicted her murderous agenda to Stiles. Scott isn’t surprised that Theo betrayed her; the chimera is still desperate to win. Instead, he’s saddened by both of them. He has to accept that Malia will probably do it again. The silver lining is that, when forced to decide between saving the veterinarian and getting her revenge, she chose to do the decent thing.

Alan being back and safe is just as fantastic as Kira being home. It’s only when he was hugging his boss that he realized he can breathe again. The ground feels firmer under his feet. He feels confident now – it’s time to get Lydia back. It’s time to finish healing.

It’s more than enough.

Scott and Stiles go over the plans to get into Eichen House. Stiles worries over each detail until Scott gets him to stop. No plan is perfect. No plan has all the details. They have two days to get logistics together and convince the others to get on board. It’s a good night, but when Stiles pauses before heading home, neither of them can speak. There are still things too difficult to say between them.

Afterwards, Scott lies on his bed, waiting to fall asleep. He hasn’t seen Theo since the tunnels. Theo tried to act cool, but his frustration at seeing the writing on the ground was real. 

The truth is – and Scott can only admit this when it’s dark and no one else is around – that he wants Theo back as well, even if the Theo he wants is a fake. Because it couldn’t all be fake, could it? No one could be that good at creating a false face.

In the early morning silence of his bedroom, he picks history apart. If he tells himself that some of the friendship was real, he needs to isolate those specific instances, like a forensic scientist examining evidence. Was that smile a lie? Was that touch on the shoulder the truth? It is delicate work. 

The only real result Scott can be sure of is doubt. The sneering Theo of the tunnels, the one who wants to impress Scott with how powerful he is, and how in control he is, he’s just as fake as the one who stood by him for weeks. There’s a real Theo under that, the one who wants both the power the Doctors promised and the friendship that Scott promised. A real Theo who wants both of those things and even more in the hope that one day he’ll be perfect.

It’s never going to be enough.

Scott thinks that if he could just talk to him, maybe they could work something out. But Theo has to be the one to start. He has to be the one to say he was wrong.

**********

While planning for Eichen House, Scott used the phone number that he never thought he would use. Braeden had given it to Stiles on the drive down to Mexico to give to him when he and Kira were rescued. He imagines that it must have been a way for Braeden – experienced in difficult situations -- to boost Stiles’ spirits. He stares at it before dialing, but he believes Liam’s and Mason’s story.

Deucalion is pleased to hear from him. The Demon Wolf is less pleased to hear the warning that Scott delivers. Scott doesn’t skimp on the details. He talks about the Dread Doctors – of whom Deucalion has heard – and what they’ve done. He talks about the resurrected chimeras. 

He talks about Theo. He tells the older man the whole story. In part, he wants to stress how dangerous Theo can be, but that’s not the only reason. Scott doesn’t hide the fact that he was fooled. He even admits how hard it was to believe what Theo had done even when confronted about it. 

He talks about his pack and how difficult it was to keep balance when everything was going to hell. He talks about mishandling Kira, violating Corey, and alienating Stiles. He tells Deucalion he now knows exactly how he felt when Marco turned on him. 

Is it a confession? Is he seeking absolution from someone who’s made mistakes that make Scott’s look like spilling his milk before nap time? Deucalion thankfully doesn’t comment on it. He does however, ask questions to clarify the matter.

“Thank you for the warning, but I get the idea that you have another reason for calling. You want me to help you.” 

“I do. I … I have to stop the Doctors and their Beast, and I have to keep an eye out for Theo and his chimeras. I don’t … I still have to get Lydia out of Eichen House. I’m losing.”

The older man hums. “I think I can misdirect Theo and neutralize his advantage to a certain extent.”

“I just …” Scott takes a deep breath. “Can you do it without anyone getting hurt?”

“No.” 

It is a fair answer; the alpha will have to put up a convincing fight in order to make the abduction look convincing. Scott can’t ask that Deucalion risk life for him, and then turn around and put too many restraints on him.

“Can you promise me that none of them will die?”

“I can promise that I will most certainly try not to kill anyone, but I can’t promise that I’ll succeed. You already understand the severity of the situation, Scott. Why is this important to you?”

“Because … they’re like me. Tracy, Corey, Josh, and Hayden didn’t ask for any of this. They were kidnapped, mutilated, and then transformed into monsters. I know what they’ve been through. I’ve died and been brought back, too. If we can stop this without them suffering anything else, then I want to try.”

Deucalion is silent for a few long seconds. “Even Theo?”

Scott hesitates to ask Deucalion to be considerate of Theo’s life and safety specifically, but he’s the alpha. He has to make the decisions that are for the best for his pack and the innocent people in Beacon Hills, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t allow something for himself. He died, however temporarily, not even a week ago, and while he’s still going to do the right thing, life is too short to be completely selfless. What he wants _matters_. “Even Theo. I don’t know his story. I don’t know if he’s like the others or if the Doctors captured him a long time ago or if he wanted this. But, he’s … he’s not like the Doctors. He could be something more. He could be someone like you.”

Scott winces when he say that. It sounds like emotional blackmail, and that is not his goal.

“You won’t be able to save everyone, Scott.” Deucalion says softly. Scott understands that this is not a reproach. 

“I have to try.” 

Deucalion agrees to allow himself to be captured and to use that position to thwart Theo’s plans. Scott is not only grateful but relieved. Deucalion may have done terrible things, but he’s smart and he’s experienced. He’ll be an advantage in the coming battle, and Scott needs all the advantages he can get.

**********

Theo is waiting for them in the library.

It’s almost _hilarious._ He’s trying to act like he was just reading a book between the shelves when they came upon him. _No, I was not waiting for you looking like I was posing for National Library Week. It is a sheer coincidence that I happen to be somewhere where you can see me._

The near hilarity ends quickly for Scott. Theo kills it by saying that he still needs to graduate.

While Stiles goes off into one of his long oddly focused threats, Scott thinks about graduation. He wants to graduate, and Theo wants to graduate. Why does Theo want to graduate? If he’s planning to take the Beast’s power, if his plan is to go deeper and deeper after power, why get a diploma? Can you not become an Evil Mastermind without it? 

Scott sees Theo looking straight at him as he talks about the Soviets during World War II. He knows the pitch is for him. Scott is the one Theo has to convince, and he’s trying to appeal to Scott’s desire for victory. Whatever the Doctors are trying to accomplish, a lot of people are going to die. 

Theo misses his mark. Because Scott doesn’t want to save a nebulous, abstract ‘everybody’ from the Doctors’ madness – he wants to save Theo and Tracy and Josh and every single individual person from the Doctors’ plans. ‘Everybody’ is just an idea, like ‘heroism’ and ‘responsibility.’ It takes many forms. Scott simply doesn’t want to see someone dead on the ground who didn’t have to be. He doesn’t think it makes him special. It’s not an accomplishment; Scott doesn’t want to spend his high-school days doing this. It’s not a source of power; Scott doesn’t expect this to be able to set the world to match his beliefs. It’s about people having lives they can live on their own terms, the way Scott wanted to live his life on his own terms. It’s a subtle difference, and Theo misses it. 

While Scott misses Theo.

Yes. Scott’s sure the details of their relationship were all fake, but he’s no longer sure that the emotions were completely an act. Theo was the Doctors’ servant, and Theo wants the alpha power for himself. Those things are incontrovertibly true. What is also true is that Theo is still focusing on Scott even though he’s is no longer their servant and doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting Scott’s alpha power. 

Scott is good at reading people. Theo doesn’t need Scott to get Lydia, but still he wants to work together. Why? Scott is sure that Theo doesn’t know why he’s doing that either. 

Scott has gotten most of his friends back; he has the girl he loves back. He is about to get Lydia back. Yet, he still wants the ‘fake’ Theo back. Because the ‘fake’ Theo had been a friend when Scott had needed one. He wants everyone he cares about to be safe and with him.

“What do you really want?” It sounds like an accusation, but it’s a real question. 

Theo’s answer isn’t anywhere near the truth, but Scott barely listens to it, because the question was more to himself.

He cares about Theo Raeken. Liar or not. Monster or not. Murderer or not. Scott cares about him and he wants to help him.

**********

They meet to discuss the Beast and his possible appearance at the charity lacrosse game. It shouldn’t be a problem because they convinced Coach to be the coach again. He can forfeit and that will end the threat, but they aren’t taking any chances. Malia brings up her worries that it isn’t going to work, and that they’ll have to face the beast, and she points out that Scott’s still healing.

Scott finds himself struck with a momentary spike in his anger. Why does she care now? Malia hadn’t bothered to check on him when she wanted to go off on her murder mission and he was in the way.

Kira corrects her because she’s the only who bothered to check up on him. Stiles knew he was hurt, but he didn’t ask about it. Liam knew he was hurt, but he didn’t ask. 

He tells everyone that he healed when they were together again, when they were a pack. Scott hadn’t told anyone before that because he didn’t think it was important. He just assumed that it didn’t matter to them.

He told his mother the day after they rescued Lydia that his wound had finally healed. She was surprised, and she tried to hide that surprise, but she can’t hide much from Scott anymore. It wasn’t that she didn’t care; it was just that she had become so used to his being able to heal from anything that she didn’t realize the wound was lingering to begin with. 

She had been angry with Liam – she was probably still angry with Liam – so she absolutely cares about what happens to Scott. The reality of it hits Scott like a load of bricks; his mother doesn’t know how to deal with this any more than he does.

The truth is they – the pack, his mother, the Sheriff, everyone but Deaton – all behave exactly the same way Stiles does. They hold an image of him as this unbeatable hero, when he’s really just a senior in high school. They thought he was invulnerable. The Once-In-A-Century True Alpha. He offers them hope that everything will be alright, and they hold onto that, just as his mother said they would.

It’s just hard sometimes for Scott. He died at the hands of Liam and Theo, and not one single person had asked him about what it made him feel like, even though he wants to talk about it. 

But can he really blame them? Stiles doesn’t want to be reminded of the deal he made with Theo. Malia and Kira don’t want to be reminded that they were somewhere else when it happened. Liam can barely look him in the face. He has to forgive them, because they don’t know what to do any more than he does.

Scott is trying not to hide from the truth anymore, and the truth is that Theo got close to him so easily because he was the first person in a long time to see Scott as vulnerable. The rest of his friends and family place him on such a high pedestal that failure seems like betrayal.

He wondered if he could get Kira to believe there is good in Theo. It would be a difficult sell. She is still enduring the strain of what the Doctors had done to her, and it had happened the first time she met Theo. She is probably holding quite a grudge.

Scott should be holding a grudge, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t like being murdered. He didn’t like having his pack twisted against him. All of that is true.

Villains do terrible things as heroes do good things. But a hero doesn’t have to stay a hero, and a villain doesn’t have to stay a villain. It’s not written in stone. If he wants Theo to be better Scott has to believe that it’s possible for them both to move past what happened. 

The night goes exactly as he expected it to go. Coach refuses to forfeit the game. Malia’s mother, the Desert Wolf, shows up and prevents Malia from sabotaging the broadcast vans. Kira’s fox decides to foul as many people as she possibly can.

After being ejected from the game through a pre-arranged gambit with Brett, Kira storms into the high school. Brett’s sister tries to keep an eye on her, but it ends up in a fight. When he catches up to the pair of them, there’s no way to calm her down besides roaring her name at her. In control once more, the look on Kira’s face is one of befuddlement and fear. She could be consumed by her fox, amplified and twisted by the Doctors with Theo’s help. As Scott looks in her eyes, he knows she’ll never be comfortable around Theo ever again. 

She shouldn’t have to be. Theo hurt all of his pack, but she’s still the one who is still in danger. Scott needs to get his head on straight.

It’s easier said than done when he has a running battle with La Bete de Gevaudan through the hallways of the high school. When he reveals himself to at thirty people in the library. What was he going to do? Not fight so they wouldn’t know he was a werewolf?

**********

Scott takes Liam to a meeting with Theo and Tracy in the Boys Locker Room.

It’s a gesture. It’s trust. It’s a step in the right direction.

He immediately knows that Deucalion is there. Scott hears a singular tap of his cane on the concrete floor of the gym. It’s the former Demon Wolf’s way of alerting him. Scott will never forget the distinctive sound of the white cane. 

Theo is welcoming but smug. Liam acts all macho with threats. Scott’s not sure who his beta is trying to convince: Theo, Scott, or himself. Tracy instinctively identifies the threat to her master and moves to neutralize it. 

Theo’s pitch is simple and effective. He knows Scott after all. He knows that Scott’s primary motivation is to free Mason from the Doctors, and his secondary motivation is to keep the Beast from killing anyone else. The First Chimera knows that their plans have enough in common that they can work together for a while.

They come to an agreement to meet later that night. It’s a deal with the devil, but it’s the only lead they’ve got. 

Scott nearly loses his composure to the overwhelming sense of relief he feels when he sees Theo. 

He knew that the chimera had taken Valack’s spare Doctor’s mask from Eichen House. Parrish had told him it was missing when deputies went back to get Valack’s and Nurse Cross’s bodies. Scott had feared Theo putting the mask on in order to grasp more power for himself. Had nightmares where the mask fused itself to Theo’s skull, drained him what was left of his humanity and left him an emotionless monster. A cold an empty creature shimmering in and out of focus like the Doctors that made him. Until he saw Theo again, he couldn’t have been fully sure. He has to bite his tongue to keep from smiling when he sees Theo as human as anyone in the room. 

Scott isn’t arrogant enough to believe that his concern about Theo goes both ways. Theo is acting as if his victory is inevitable, and that Scott and his pack should get out of his way. But Theo’s victory isn’t inevitable. Scott knows this. 

He has Deucalion in position. Deucalion could end this. He could end this right now, if Scott gives the word. Theo and Tracy aren’t slouches, but if they were pinned between Scott, Liam, and Deucalion, they’d lose. 

Scott doesn’t give the word. 

Theo’s victory isn’t inevitable. Theo does not know this. 

The Doctors are not stupid. They are not unobservant. Right now, they are more concerned with protecting and nurturing the Beast within Mason until he’s no longer Mason. But Scott – Scott hopes to God this is true – and Theo both understand that the Doctors won’t hesitate to kill if either pack threatens their project. 

The game needs to be played to its end.


	7. Chapter 7

Theo, Liam and he are walking through the woods. The key to locating the Dread Doctors and rescuing Mason is a Nazi alpha werewolf. 

Because of course it is.

The moon sends columns of light down through the trees like slanted silver pillars. If Scott imagines hard enough, he could think he’s simply leading his pack on a midnight run. Scott could imagine it perfectly, he and his two betas running through the forest. They could simply enjoy the speed, the power, the play of the world on their senses, and then they’d go to someone’s house for snacks and to watch some dumb movie until dawn came.

Liam wouldn’t be so angry with Theo that Scott could taste the rage in the back of his throat. Theo wouldn’t layer every sentence with false promises and regret. They’d run like a pack of real wolves -- all six of them, with Malia and Hayden and even Tracy -- and when they got to his house, Stiles and Lydia and Kira and Mason would be there, and Stiles would tease them about getting lost and Lydia would fondly roll her eyes and there would be this huge good-natured struggle about exactly which movie they were going to watch. 

They’d be happy. 

It’s a nice daydream.

This time, it’s Scott himself who ruins the fantasy. He needs to make sure that his failsafe is in place, so he asks Theo about Deucalion. He warns Theo that he shouldn’t trust him. Perversely enough, he’s sincere. Scott knows how dangerous the Demon Wolf can be, and he knows that if Theo presents too great a threat to Deucalion, Theo won’t stand a chance.

Theo does the thing so many of his enemies have tried to do and make what the bad guys do the good guys’ fault.

“And you’re the one who let him live.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“You still think that you’re gonna get through this without killing anyone?”

And there it is, once again. For all that his enemies claim to be smarter than him, they still can’t tell the difference between murder and killing. At least, they pretend they can’t tell the difference. Peter had Talia. Gerard had the Code. Jennifer was a servant of the Balance. They had clear bright lines between necessary actions and actions designed to get them what they wanted. It had been easier for them to ignore that line.

Theo is different. Scott can put a pin in exactly what is different about him and the others. He’s just doing what he was taught to do by the Doctors. Their philosophy shines through him. He calls himself a realist, and to a certain point it’s true. The Doctors are so fixated on their science and their goal to resurrect the Beast that nothing else matters. It’s a zero-sum game to them, and Theo follows their example.

But life is more than that. Life is more than fulfilling goals. It’s hanging out, and doing homework, and mowing the lawn, and getting fitted for a suit for a wedding, and it’s boredom, and it’s cold days where you stay on the couch for six hours watching a Law & Order SVU marathon.

Scott can’t imagine the Doctors doing any of that. They’re not really people. They’re … machines. He can’t imagine them reading a book or watching a movie. He can’t imagine them going shopping. He can’t imagine them eating. He can’t imagine them lying on a bed and making gentle fun of him while Scott fails at video games.

He can imagine Theo doing all of that though. Easily. 

And that’s why Scott’s going to save him.

Liam attempts to ditch Theo once he gets a lock on Mason’s scent. Scott may look like he is hesitating, but he is not. He is not going to tell Liam what he needs to do in this situation. Liam needs to learn to deal with people like Theo, and Theo needs to understand that actions have consequences. Theo led Liam to the idea that it was right to kill Scott to get the power he needed, now Liam should be afraid that Theo is doing the same thing again.

Scott lets Liam make the call. Liam decides to work with Theo for Mason’s good. Scott doesn’t smile, because it’s not appropriate, but that’s the call he would make.

Always put the innocent above grudges or retribution, even if you end up working with monsters. 

The Doctors have linked Mason by a horrific looking device to a tank filled with green liquid and a monstrosity that must be Der Soldat. Theo looks puzzled, but he doesn’t look horrified. He may not know exactly what the Doctors’ plans are, but this was his home. This was his life.

They can’t even touch the device without causing Mason immense pain. Scott stares at it, his mind working frantically to figure out a way to get Mason free. Liam is beginning to panic. Theo doesn’t recognize this particular piece of equipment.

They run out of time. The Doctors have come. They have surrounded them.

Scott sees it immediately. “They wanted us here.” It makes perfect sense. They already wanted him dead, and now they can get Theo and Liam as well. It will remove the packs in opposition to them, so they can deal with the Argents and Parrish at their leisure. Divide and conquer.

“Theo … Theo Raeken.”

Scott’s only heard the Surgeon speak once before. It’s calculating and direct, devoid of any emotion … inhuman.

Theo is many bad things, but he is not a coward. He has hazarded his life on gaining this status and he’s not going to cower. Not yet. He boldly tells the Surgeon that they’re taking Mason. Scott doesn’t think that the three of them can back up that boast. 

“Failure Theo Raeken.”

Scott watches the words hit Theo like blasts from Argent’s shotgun. His posture, his demeanor, the tremble in his denial, all tell a story. Theo thinks he has to do this. With the rigor he learned from his mentors, he is either a failure or a success. He either becomes the alpha or he is worthless trash. There’s no wiggle room. There’s no room at all for anything but the mission. 

What a terrible way to live.

And now Scott is sure of it. As much as the ‘fake’ Theo was there to disrupt his pack and steal his power, Theo must have enjoyed the chance to be … normal. 

The Surgeon begins to talk about just how much Theo is a failure, and Scott can see what’s happening. The Surgeon is trying to push Theo’s buttons. They’re trying to goad him into fighting in order to get the three of them away from Mason. 

Scott urges Theo not to listen. Theo listens the way an angry child listens to their parents when they explain why it’s his bedtime.

As the Pathologist and the Geneticist angle their way around the room, the Surgeon continues his rather obvious attempt to troll Theo. Scott has to give it to them. Their plan is working. Theo hears why Mason is better than he is, and it drives him into a rage. Theo can’t hear Scott’s words. 

Scott wants to tell Theo that the Doctors are wrong. Theo isn’t ordinary. He’s not a failure. He can’t let others judge him like that. The only standards that matter are the ones you set for yourself. But Theo needs their approval, as he perversely needs Scott’s approval. It’s another similarity with Stiles, and Scott will have to work that messy ball of conflict out later. 

And just like Stiles, Theo lashes out when the world doesn’t live up to his standards. Stiles wants to be the hero, yet is repeatedly confronted with evidence of him not being, no matter how many times Scott and others tell him that the evidence is misleading. Theo wants to be special and perfect, and he can’t bear to hear the Surgeon, his nightmare father, cataloging the ways he has failed, no matter how many victories he has.

The fight goes exactly as Scott imagined it, which means the Doctors begin to kick their asses. Scott’s under no delusion that the Doctors aren’t fighting to kill, and he’s under no delusion that either Theo or Liam are going to obey if he orders them to run. Neither will abandon Mason, for their own reasons.

Scott feels it settle in his stomach. There are worse ways to die than trying to protect an innocent.

It turns out it won’t be tonight, because something even worse happens.

“Transformation,” crows the Surgeon. “Transformation without frequency.”

**********

The Doctors are dead. Scott had watched as Mason -- no, not Mason, the Beast -- tore them apart. At first, he hadn’t understood it. The Doctors had been powerful and dedicated to the Beast’s well being. What sense had it made to do that to them?

The answer comes slowly. Scott hears it while he’s trapped in the workroom of the Animal Clinic by the Surgeon’s freaky pseudo-science. As an alpha, he can hear the conversation as if he were standing in front of them. 

“Marcel … if this is what immortality looks like, I think you might have been misled.” 

“For you … all for you.” 

Sebastien demands to know where the Pike is, but Scott’s mind is reeling so badly that he doesn’t hear the rest of it. He knows the answer anyway. The Surgeon, the leader of the Doctors, was Sebastien’s best friend from centuries ago. Or maybe they were more. But it wasn’t a lust for the perfect evil that caused the Surgeon to exist in a horrific half-state through decades. It wasn’t an insatiable curiosity that drove Marcel to mutilate and murder children to resurrect an ancient werewolf lycanthropic serial killer. It was a man wanting his best friend back.

The Beast when it first transformed fully was formed not only of Sebastien Valet, a callous monster who enjoyed killing, it was also Mason Hewitt, who always stood by those he cared about, furious at the pain inflicted on his best friend. Mason’s rage to protect Liam, untempered and out of control, had called for the Doctors’ destruction by the Beast before Valet could assume full control. The Doctors were created and destroyed by the same irresistible force.

From the past, Peter’s voice whispers: _The simple and undeniable power of human love._

Scott thinks about how powerful feelings can be while he waits in the hospital for news of Lydia’s condition with Stiles and Liam. He gets off the phone with Malia, who is at his house. She is testy and fretting over being there and being protected by Braeden. It’s tinged with guilt, because this is a trap of her own making. She doesn’t want to be locked away for her own safety; she wants to be with Stiles and the rest of the pack. Scott wants her here, but he also wants her safe.

Scott and Malia’s relationship is not due to some mystical bond between them as members of the pack. They’re friends. They're all friends. Yes, Malia is angry with Stiles, and Scott is disappointed in her. Stiles is shamefaced, but Malia above all wants to be with them, because they’re in trouble. Because, in the end, they’ve all learned the lesson: friends don’t leave friends behind. 

Undeniable power.

Stiles paces with worry over Lydia. He alternates between holding onto her hand as she tries to recover and standing in the hospital hallway with them. He keeps looking at Scott, and Scott’s not sure why. They only had the beginnings of a plan. Lydia might be able to call Mason back to himself the way she called Jackson back to himself. Her voice might be the key to saving him, but her throat’s been slashed. Scott doesn’t know what Stiles expects him to do about that. 

Scott turns away the last time Stiles does it, because Stiles is looking at him like Marcel might have looked at Sebastien, and Scott doesn’t know how to handle that. Was that what had happened between them? Did Stiles just expect Scott to know the exact right thing to do or to say? Stiles always solved the mysteries, but Scott was the one who solved the problems. Did Stiles actually think everything was going to be all right -- that nothing he did could ever be too bad -- as long as Scott never turned away from him?

Undeniable power. 

Liam sits in a hard plastic seat next to him, looking even younger than the night that Scott bit him on the roof several floors above. He’s gripping the arms of the chair like the floor might fall out from under him if he doesn’t. His anger has vanished, drowned by the horror of what is going on right now: his best friend has been consumed by darkness and that darkness has kidnapped the girl he has come to love. No one knows where they are, or what they are doing.

Liam doesn’t look to Scott for answers, because he thinks he already knows the answer. He thinks he doesn’t have the right to ask for anything. _This is all his fault._ His throat works as he contemplates that his best friend is gone forever, that there is nothing they can do to save him. Scott knows that look; Liam is getting himself ready to kill Mason because it’s the only thing he can do for his friend now. Scott’s seen that look on many faces, including his own. Liam will do anything for Mason -- even the unthinkable -- and that very dedication is what will save Mason in the end.

Undeniable power.

Scott checks his phone. There are two messages. Kira is sweet and guileless. Scott’s forgotten that, and the realization that he has makes him wonder, achingly, what else he’s forgotten. He’s been so worried about the fox that he’s forgotten that there’s a girl there too, and her words tell him that she loves him as well. That she does more than love him, that she believes in him so much she’s going to risk herself for what he believes in. 

Scott tells Liam that the fight isn’t over. He sees Liam look up at him in hope.

Scott tells his mother to give Lydia an injection in her throat. He’ll protect her; he’ll carry her there if he has to. 

Scott tells Stiles to take Plan A to Malia, and asks him for the one thing he’s only truly ever asked from him -- to trust him. Stiles takes it and goes. 

They’re going to get Mason back. They’re going to save Malia from her birth mother. They’re going to rescue Hayden. Scott thinks that there’s even a chance to save Theo from himself. He tells them this and they believe in him. He believes in himself, because he knows they have one thing that matters above any darkness.

Undeniable power.

**********

Theo ambushes them in the tunnels as Scott and Liam try to get her to the Beast.

Scott’s surprised by the ambush itself, but he’s not surprised that Theo sees the need for it. Theo’s still trying to win. He’s still thinks he needs to be _more_ in order to be happy.

First, Theo electrocutes Liam and him, and Scott wonders when the hell he got the ability to do that? It reminds him of Josh’s power. Theo must really have self-discipline not to show it until now. While they’re twitching on the floor, Theo tries to throw Lydia down a pit. Scott is straining to hold on to his hope for Theo, because it seems the chimera is just lashing out now. Scott lunges forward and snags Lydia’s hand before she can fall.

Oh. He has to get rid of Lydia. Theo’s figured out what they’re going to try to do, and he can’t have them saving Mason before he gets the power. Scott won’t let that happen.

Theo straddles Scott’s back and digs his claws in. It’s a different place, but it still stings all the same. Theo has Tracy’s venom and is paralyzing him. Scott’s strength slipping away, losing control of his body as Lydia desperately clings to his hand, is only a little more gut wrenching than the realization that Theo must have killed his own pack for power. Deucalion must have taught him how. 

“Just let it happen,” Theo croons to him. “Let it go. Let everything go.” 

His grip is slipping as his hands go numb, but Scott knows that isn’t what Theo is talking about. Theo wants Scott to give up on believing in people. Theo wants Scott to give up on believing in Theo. Theo can only justify his actions to himself if he thinks he’s a ‘realist’ and that physical power is the only thing that really matters. Scott possesses a different sort of power, the power he and his pack share: love and trust and friendship. It sounds corny, but five people working together because they believe in each other will always be more powerful than one person enslaving four others. Scott is willing -- he’s always been willing -- to share it with Theo, and Theo can’t have that. It goes against every single thing he’s been taught.

Theo was a man digging for treasure in loose sand. He keeps digging and digging hoping for the treasure at the bottom of the hole, but the hole keeps filling in from the sides. As long as he keeps digging, the hole is still there, but he’ll never reach his destination. And he can’t bring himself to stop digging because that means all that time will be wasted. 

Scott screams “No!” as Lydia falls, but it’s not just about Lydia. It’s an answer to Theo as well.

Theo wanders off to face the Beast. Scott’s worried about Lydia, but he’s also worried about Theo. He’s going to get himself killed.

**********

Deucalion comes and gets him and Liam. He helps him up and assures Scott -- who should have thought of it but he was too busy being upset -- that Lydia is fine. Deucalion can hear her heartbeat and it’s stable and normal. He’ll lead the pair of them to her.

They find Theo first. He’s up against the wall, looking savaged by the Beast. Scott stops himself from rushing to see if he’s okay. This was the person who just minutes ago electrocuted him and paralyzed him and tried to get him to give up hope. He can’t decide which is the traitor: his brain for telling him that this is what Theo deserves or his heart for telling that this isn’t what Theo deserves.

Deucalion is all business. Theo is shocked and hurt -- Scott can hear it in the voice -- when he realizes that Deucalion was working with him. Deucalion taunts him with the fact that Belasko’s talons would have worked and then snaps his neck. 

Scott stands there like a stone. Things are moving too fast again, and he wants to stop Deucalion. Isn’t beating Theo enough? Do they have to torment him? Do they have to kill him? Then Scott hears Theo’s heartbeat. Deucalion is true to his word. The wound will immobilize Theo for the rest of the fight against the Beast.

It’s mercy. 

Scott flees when Deucalion gets shot by Gerard. The old son of a bitch is surprised by Scott working with Deucalion. Scott isn’t surprised that he is surprised. Gerard is a creature of hatred and grudges, and he can’t imagine that Scott’s forgiven Deucalion for his attempt to manipulate him or that Deucalion has changed. Gerard will never change.

Gerard is even more surprised when his own son turns on him at Scott’s behest. It makes no sense that Gerard would be surprised. Gerard lied to Chris, forced Victoria to die, manipulated Allison, and yet the old man is still shocked that Chris would choose a werewolf over him. Hatred narrows your vision just as much as greed does.

Scott looks back at Theo. Is he listening? Does he see what he’ll become if he doesn’t start looking at people as more than simply tools? An old man with nothing but the past and his own rage choking him.

Scott can’t spend anymore time; Chris will take care of his father and see to taking the wolfsbane bullet out of Deucalion. If Theo’s still there after the fight, Scott will try to talk to him. If Theo’s gone, Scott will hope he finds someplace to be happy. Maybe Scott will get to help Theo find that someplace. 

That would be mercy, too.

**********

Theo, contrary to his own advice, can’t let everything go.

The Beast is defeated, dead by Scott’s hand. Lydia is safe. Liam is safe. Mason is safe and in Corey’s arms. Kira stands there, powerful and beautiful. The pack has won.

But Theo can’t let it go. He’s lost everything -- the friends he made, his mentors, his pack, his chances -- everything is gone. Wait. Not everything. The illicit power he ripped from his pack is still there, and like a maniac unaware of what he is doing he hurls it at the pack. 

Scott is still pretty beat up from the fight with the Beast. His first reaction when Kira intercepts the lightning bolt meant for him is to try to talk Theo down. Theo doesn’t have to do this. It’s not too late. What’s been done doesn’t have to decide what comes next.

Only it does. 

“The Skin-walkers have a message for you, Theo.”

Scott looks at Kira. She’s burning with lightning; her voice is like thunder. He wants to stop her, because he can intuit the threat behind the message. But he can’t. He can’t put his own desires above her well-being. Her fox spirit is still unbalanced; it could still consume her. He has no idea what deal she has struck with the Skin-walkers to get her sword reassembled, or what penalty she would pay for failure to deliver on it. 

“Your sister wants to see you.”

The ground shakes and splits open. A hole opens up at Theo’s feet. The First Chimera stands there, stunned, uncomprehending. Scott tears up because he’s seen that look before when he shattered Jennifer’s protective ring of mountain ash. This isn’t supposed to happen. 

Scott never saw Tara Raeken when she was alive, but that is who it must be. Theo’s face when he recognizes her is undeniable. This is his worst nightmare because along with the fear is the guilt. Theo can feel guilt. He does. And now it’s come to drag him down into … the underworld. Now it’s Theo’s turn to be judged.

This is wrong.

Theo has done terrible things. He’s done horrible things, but so have a lot of people. Why is Theo being singled out?

“Scott, help me! No! No!”

Scott’s heart starts beating faster at the please in Theo’s voice. His mouth goes dry; it’s not fair. Gerard Argent is still alive and free; for all his schemes, he still helped more than he hurt against the Beast. Deucalion is still alive and free; for all the pain he caused and the blood he spilled, his vision has been returned to him. Chris Argent threatened Scott’s life more than once and now they’re close friends. Derek slashed him open with his claws and now they’re brothers.

Why can’t Theo be the same? Scott takes a single step toward the hole. Theo isn’t faking. The terror is real.

“Scott! Help me, Scott!”

Scott takes another step toward the hole and then another. The rest of the pack is still, watching the judgment passed come to its fullness, still as statues as Kira channels the Skin-walkers’ fury. They won’t help. Theo tore them open and left them bleeding, deep wounds slow to heal. 

Scott has always healed faster than anyone else. Theo isn’t faking his terror. The plea for help is real. Theo thinks that Scott will save him.

“No, Scott! Help me!”

Scott knows he can do it. He can rush forward and snatch Theo out of the hole with all of his strength. His strength is his strength, even though it comes from the pack. 

He doesn’t know if he should. He doesn’t know why the Skin-walkers have intervened in this way. Will it endanger Kira if he stops it? Will the Skin-walkers punish her if she doesn’t deliver her message? 

What’s more, he doesn’t know how his friends will react. Will they see him sparing Theo from his just deserts as a betrayal? Will it shatter the weakened bonds with pack, the bonds that Theo weakened on purpose? He simply doesn’t know. He can’t know in time, so he does what Theo couldn’t do.

He lets him go.


	8. Chapter 8

That should be the end of it.

Months pass. Scott folds up what happened and stores the events away like clothes you’ve outgrown into the attic. He folds up Stiles’ violent fear; he folds up the moment when Malia abandoned him; he folds up the feel of Liam’s claws; he folds up Eichen House and Shiprock.

He folds up Theo.

Scott has always kept a little place in the back of his mind where he hides away everything that’s hurt him. It’s where he keeps how terrified he was of his asthma attacks when he thought he might die — which was every time. It’s where he keeps the long nights when he listened to Mom and Dad fight in their bedroom, thinking he couldn’t hear. He made this little place so he could be a good boy and his father wouldn’t be so disappointed in him, and if his father wasn’t disappointed in him, maybe he would stay.

It didn’t work. 

After he got bit, the little place became very crowded. Suddenly there was a whole bunch of other things that had to be put in there. The attack in the woods and the days immediately afterward. Running through the school in the middle of the night. Peter sharing his memories of being burned alive in a house with the Hale family. Coughing up black blood in the woods by himself, a bullet in his side, alone. Getting a knife in the gut. Choking on fumes as a woman smiled down at him. His mother’s horrified face in a jail cell when she saw his transformation. Drowning under ice. Allison’s last breath. Kira driving away with the streetlamps exploding behind her. He kept folding things up and putting them in there, because he wasn’t Peter, he wasn’t Derek, he wasn’t Deucalion, he wasn’t Jennifer -- he wasn’t going to use what people did to him as an excuse to hurt other people.

He placed all those things that he never talked about -- like being murdered -- and put them there. Then he shut the door. Gone. Never to be thought of or spoken of again.

And then suddenly, Theo Raeken is standing in his living room when he comes home from Canaan. 

The little place, like an overstuffed suitcase, springs open and everything comes rushing out at once. He’s there. He’s standing there, and the first thing Scott can think of is that Theo is wearing his clothes.

It’s not appropriate that Theo is wearing his clothes. It’s not appropriate that Scott thinks he looks good in them. Adrenaline surges through his body and he stills it through sheer force of will. He wants to claw Theo apart. He wants to take Theo by the shoulders and find out if he’s okay. He wants to scream at Theo and whoever is responsible for letting him out. He wants to sit Theo down and tell him how lonely he’s been. 

When Scott says “It’s taking all my strength not to tear you apart,” he’s not lying. When he stops Malia from punching Theo’s head through his kitchen floor, he’s not lying either.

Liam, heedless of the situation he’s caused, starts arguing with Scott. Right out in the open, right out in front of everyone. Scott encouraged Liam to start thinking and acting like a leader, yet this is his first decision. 

Liam’s staring up at him like he doesn’t get why Scott’s so upset, and Scott doesn’t know what to say to that. All these terrible conflicting emotions are exploding and burning and flying about the room and he can’t focus on one of them long enough to create a coherent argument. Theo is trying to be charming from his position on the floor, and Scott can’t bear to look at him so he drags Liam into the other room. 

Scott barely listens to Liam’s arguments, except to get the idea that Liam’s idea of leadership is going with the first reckless plan that pops into his head. He’s still thinking about Theo in the other room, until Liam makes the claim that Scott made mistakes when he was learning to be an alpha.

Scott goggles. He manages enough composure not to say out loud that he learned to be an alpha on his own with no help. No one taught him to be an alpha, not like Scott was teaching Liam. And while he did make mistakes, he didn’t do anything similar to bringing the chimera who convinced Liam to murder him back from a hell realm because of a shitty plan he cooked up in a day with his girlfriend and the new science teacher. Does Liam not understand how Theo’s presence makes him feel?

 

But the momentary disbelief in Liam’s words clears his mind. Maybe this is okay. Maybe things have changed. Maybe he can salvage Theo from this mess.

“Convince me.”

**********

Scott calms down by the time they set up their Ghost Rider trap in an old Operating Theater that Theo shows them.

Theo becomes helpful once again. He’s good at it; Scott remembers that. He’s insightful without being petty, when he points out that the plan is very complex. Scott knows the plan is not simple. It requires the Faraday cage to hold the Ghost Rider. It requires the equipment scavenged from the Doctors to withstand successive lightning strikes. It requires Hayden to be faster than a ghost rider. And there is a lot that could go wrong from multiple Ghost Riders to, as Mason put it, catastrophic solar flares. 

There has always been a wide range of actions between doing something because you can’t simply do nothing (the Derek Hale method) and the doing something only when you have everything planned out to the last minutiae (the Deucalion method). Part of bravery -- part of leadership -- is making the best of a bad situation. The Ghost Riders are taking people. They have to discover why; they have to discover how. This is a bad situation, and they only have a dangerous plan. 

“Let’s do it.” He’s not just saying that to sound confident. Scott is confident.

The Rider arrives and Hayden manages to rush through, but the gate to the Faraday cage gets stuck. Scott’s struggling with it -- the Rider can’t break free! -- when suddenly Theo is right next to him, giving him the time he needs not only to get the gate shut, but also distracting the Outlaw enough for Scott to grab its gun. Scott winces as he hears Theo’s shoulder snap under the Ghost Riders’ assault.

He wants to see to Theo’s wound, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Theo will heal -- even if he is back to being ‘classic Theo,’ as a disgusted Hayden reported. That callous joke is what holds Scott back. Theo used ‘helping’ to get into the pack before, so Scott can’t trust Theo’s freely given help. He needs more.

He wants more. He wants to believe that Theo can change. So, even while Theo stands near to him while Liam stutteringly talks to the Outlaw, even while he wants to put Theo into the category of ‘possible friend’ or even ‘possible pack.’ He doesn’t.

But it’s a start.

Theo bears even more wounds when Scott and Liam get back from forcing Parrish out of the hut. The whole thing with Parrish is something they hadn’t considered -- that the Ghost Riders could control a hellhound. Scott’s worried about what this means for everyone and for Parrish when they come back, but they find Theo bleeding on the floor.

Liam rages about sending Theo back, but Scott recognizes that the wounds on the dead Ghost Rider match the bite marks of the serial killer who has been eating pineal glands. It cannot be Theo, and Scott believes him when Theo says it is Mr. Douglas, Liam’s science teacher.

So Theo didn’t kill the Ghost Rider, but Scott is beginning to suspect that he knows more than he is telling. This can’t stand. They start searching for Corey, who disappeared while they were driving Parrish, and when they’re alone for a moment, Scott finally rounds on Theo. 

“What haven’t you told us?”

“You didn’t -- “ Theo starts with a smirk.

“Don’t say that!” Scott shouts at him. “Don’t say you didn’t ask. Is this fun for you? Is this a game? Corey’s missing! We don’t know why Douglas took the Ghost Rider’s undead brain!”

Theo looks scared and hurt for a moment before the swagger comes back. By now, Scott can tell it’s a defense mechanism. “You guys want to send me back. Once I tell you everything I know, how do I know that you won’t do exactly that?”

“Because I don’t do that.” Scott answers angrily as they stand between the trees. “I don’t use people and then toss them away!”

“You wanted to send me back into that … that place, just yesterday!” Theo protests.

“I was scared!” Scott nearly slaps a hand over his mouth. He does not want Theo to see weakness. That’s what Theo used before. 

Theo is shocked, because part of him is still the same. Whatever he was expecting Scott to say, that wasn’t it. 

“Sure.” It’s dismissive, and the chimera turns away.

Scott feels the rage boil through him. “You don’t get to act like that!” He reaches out and snatches Theo by the arm. He’s far stronger than Theo; he always has been. “You don’t get to tell me what you did to me doesn’t matter!”

Scott feels the rage boil through him. He reaches out and snatches Theo by the arm. He’s far stronger than Theo; he always has been.

"No, you don't get to just walk away!" he said. "You think that I don't have reason to be scared of you?"

Theo is shocked again, and then he is scared, the fear rising in his eyes. It’s still about power for him; the Doctors always held their greater strength over him, so they could do whatever they like. Since Scott is stronger than Theo, Theo expects pain or punishment.

“I liked you! I trusted you! More than I should have! And you didn’t care. You think the worst thing you did was tear my chest open? Yeah, it hurt a lot, but I’ve been shot.” Scott touches his left side right under his rib cage. “Stabbed with a hunting knife.” He touches his stomach just to the right side of his belly button. “Stabbed with a sword!” He touches just beneath his sternum. “And none of those hurt more than when I realized you didn’t care about me at all.”

The words are said. There’s no unsaying them. Theo’s shock and fear transforms before his eyes into disbelief and wonder. Scott feels sick that he said them.

“Why would you want something like me to care about you? I’m barely even human.” It’s not delivered with a sneer.

Scott looks Theo right in the eyes. “But you could have been.” Theo blinks twice.

“Liam!” Scott bellows. It’s more like a roar. Liam appears with Hayden and Mason. They’re wondering what’s going on. Mason’s beginning to break down. 

“Yes?” Liam asks quietly. 

“Take care of your … responsibility.” Scott turns and walks away. His heart is pounding, and he thinks he’s going to start crying if he stays any longer, and he can’t let Theo, or anyone else for that matter, see it. “I’m going to go find Malia.”

**********

Scott avoids Theo for as long as he can. It’s not hard. The entire town has been kidnapped by the Wild Hunt. Even his mother. Things have changed, however, because when his mother disappeared, he remembered her. He is not sure what’s going on.

Lydia believes that something fundamental has changed about the hunt. With Corey’s disappearance and Mr. Douglas eating a Ghost Rider’s soul, it’s like the Hunt has been altered. This doesn’t mean anything good. 

Oh, and Mr. Douglas is Der Soldat, the Dread Doctors’ Fountain of Youth -- and a Nazi werelion. Fantastic. Liam broke Kira’s sword to get this nearly useless piece of information. Scott tries to grasp what was going through his beta’s mind when he did that. 

Theo must have known about it. Scott thinks for a moment about confronting Theo once again, but he doesn’t. He knows his own strength, and he is too emotionally vulnerable right now to face the chimera.

He is even more vulnerable as he experiences his entire life with Stiles once again. It’s strange. I He remembers Stiles taunting him with a dog bowl on a full moon when Lydia kissed him, as if he were less than human, but he also remembers that Stiles was willing to risk his life to keep Scott locked up on the night of a full moon when he didn’t have an anchor. He remembers Stiles demanding not to be Robin all the time, when Scott was terrified that he had been mind controlled into murdering the bus driver, but he also remembers that Stiles has always believed that Scott was some form of superhero. He remembers the confrontation over Donovan, where Stiles tried to blame him for everything that’s gone wrong in his life, but he also knows that the person that Stiles was most afraid of disappointing was him, even over his own father.

He has to remember the bad as well as the good, but he has forgotten that the good and the bad aren’t separated into neat little piles. When they stood together before the MRI with the idea that Stiles was dying of an incurable disease it was devastating, but that was also where Scott offered him the Bite and Stiles said yes in perfect trust. They drowned together but they also saved their parents together. When Stiles was lost in possession, the phone call in the middle of the night tore Scott apart, but Scott saved him when everyone else said there was no saving him.

It wasn’t just wolf’s bane in the motel parking lot. Scott had wanted to die. He had wanted it to be over. Yet he couldn’t because Stiles -- selfish, annoying, violent, know-it-all Stiles -- refused to let him go into the long dark alone. Stiles stepped into that puddle without hesitation, because love was stronger than all the emotional wounds that the world had done to both of them.

Scott had forgotten what it felt like when he watched Stiles step into that gasoline.

And maybe that’s why he is no longer strong enough to bring Stiles back. Because in the end, Scott betrayed the very thing he had fought so long to hold onto -- a semi-freaking normal life. When you have a normal life instead of being the once-in-a-century True Alpha, people are never perfect. Loving someone sometimes means tearing yourself apart on the other person’s rough edges, as they tear themselves on yours. It means you fight with the people you love and you get mad at the people you love and sometimes you even hate the people you love. 

Good and bad aren’t separated into neat little piles. 

Lydia manages to bring Stiles back -- her newly-realized love seems to be stronger. It hasn’t had to weather the same storms that Scott and Stiles have had to endure. But they had endured them, and that’s important.

Scott decides that when this is done, he’s not going to be afraid of Theo anymore. Because just like his friendship with Stiles, Theo isn’t all one thing or all the other. If Scott thinks that there’s something in Theo worth pursuing, then he’s not going to hesitate because it could be painful. Theo can definitely be more, if Scott lets him.

The final confrontation with Douglas looks grim. Scott’s in the middle of the forest surrounded by Ghost Riders enslaved by the lowenmensch, but he can’t run. He’s not going to give a Nazi an army of undead riders who can manipulate memories and project matter into another dimension.

Douglas tries to talk to him, telling him he’d make a good Nazi Youth. Scott ignores it, because it’s a transparent attempt to get him to doubt himself. In a way, it makes him think of Theo. Theo, too, would make a good Nazi Youth, if you _only_ looked at his surface. 

But Theo is more than what he was manipulated into doing, just as Scott is more than being the True Alpha. It’s good to be reminded of these things.

And almost as a punctuation to Scott’s thoughts about it, Theo comes charging in. 

“He’s not alone.” Theo states. “He has a pack.” 

Scott’s happy. Yeah, it’s stupid. Yeah, he’s being stupid. 

Malia comes in a moment later with “And Theo’s not in it.” Scott wants to laugh aloud at the absurdity. 

Peter arrives a moment later, but Scott doesn’t care. He doesn’t listen to what the man has to say anyway. 

He’s not alone. It’s the same feeling Theo gave him, back when he was clutching his inhaler and trying to find a way to stop the Doctors. It’s back, only now there are no more lies. 

After that, it’s easy to beat the Wild Hunt.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was produced as homage for Teen Wolf. None of the characters are my own.

There is no better time than the present.

It is a beautiful, sunny June. The sky is a clear egg-shell blue and it isn’t too hot.

Stiles has left for Washington D.C. Lydia and he were driving across country. The official explanation is that Lydia wanted to help Stiles get moved in at George Washington’s dormitory and then take a few days checking out her dormitories in Cambridge. The unofficial explanation was that they wanted a leisurely two-week vacation with just the two of them. 

Malia and Peter have left to visit Cora and Derek in South America. Malia had insisted that it be cleared with her real father, and Mr. Tate had grilled Peter about all the details while lovingly polishing one of his rifles. Malia couldn’t stop grinning when she relayed the story.

Liam, Mason, Corey, and Hayden went camping in Yosemite National Park. It was supposed to have been just the four of them, but Deputy Clark, Dr. Geyer, and Mason’s parents had caught wind of it so now it was a family thing. With chaperones. And separate tents. 

Liam had begged Scott for there to be a supernatural emergency to get him out of this, but none had materialized, so they were trapped for a week in the wilderness.

That left Scott alone. Well, almost alone.

The sheriff calls him over one evening for dinner. The older man had already been exhibiting symptoms of empty-nest syndrome and inviting Scott to share delivery with him was most likely better than drinking. 

“So.” The sheriff begins. “There’s something that I don’t know if you should know about, but I’m going to tell it to you anyway.”

Scott pauses with a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth. He wonders how private dinner conversations between Stiles and Noah usually go. 

“My deputies keep finding Theo Raeken sleeping in his truck.”

“He’s still in town?” Scott puts the pizza slice down, his hunger forgotten.

“You didn’t know? Apparently, he’s homeless.”

Scott stares at the wall above the sheriff’s left shoulder. Ever since the fight with Douglas, he’s been trying to keep thoughts of Theo at bay. He’s failed. So he’s kept his thoughts abstract. What Theo had done in the past. What he could be in the future. With great and deliberate care, Scott had avoiding thinking of Theo in the present. If he thought about him in the present, Scott would have to answer questions that’s he is not ready to answer. But reality is not going to let him avoid those questions forever.

“Do you want me to look into it?” The traitorous words slip out of his mouth. 

“I don’t know. Technically, vagrancy isn’t illegal in Beacon Hills, but he’s not allowed to just park on private or public property. All my deputies do is make him move his truck. I talked to our local homeless advocates, but they can’t force him to come in for help.”

The sheriff and Scott stare at each other. The sheriff looks at him in sympathy and a bit in reluctance. The sheriff knows what Theo did to his pack. He knows what Theo did to his son. He also knows what Theo did when the Ghost Riders came. He’s torn.

So is Scott. 

He made a decisions month ago not to be afraid of Theo. But if he’s not afraid of Theo, what is he? It’s inconvenient. There’s no threat to stop him from thinking about Theo. There’s no friend with a grudge to get angry at him for thinking about Theo. There’s every reason to think that Theo is lost and miserable. There’s every reason to think that Scott can help him. And if he tries to help Theo, he’s going to have to say what Theo means to him. 

He tells the sheriff the next time he gets a call about Theo’s truck to have the dispatcher call him, and he’ll do his best. Scott doesn’t say what he’ll do his best about.

School is out and summer school hasn’t started, so when Scott gets the call, it is because Theo has parked his truck in the high school parking lot. He gets on his bike, but he pulls to the side about a block away. He doesn’t know why …

That’s a lie he tells himself, and he knows why he tells it. If he drove up to the parking lot, there would be a chance that Theo could hear his motorbike and drive away before he could talk to him. He wants to talk to Theo. He needs to.

Theo is asleep in the back seat of his truck. He doesn’t look like a vicious predator. He looks innocent. He looks like the Theo that dropped down from the sky to join the fight against Belasko. Scott is completely sure that he’s seen this person since then. He’s sure. Between the manipulations, there was a real person there. There was a real person in need. 

Well, two, if Scott counted himself. 

Scott stares at him for maybe five minutes. Ten minutes? A knock on the window will shatter the illusion. A knock on the window will bring back the past. But he has to. Scott promised himself that he wouldn’t keep dodging his own feelings.

Theo startles out of his sleep and before he realizes that it is Scott there, he says “I’m going. I’m going.” 

“You don’t have to go.” 

“Scott?” Theo rubs at his eyes. He’s unguarded now. His breath catches in his throat and he realizes where he is and who is there with him. Scott can almost see the defenses slide back into place.

Scott doesn’t say anything; he just nods. He had a speech prepared, but it has fled somewhere. He stands there, kind of stupidly.

Theo gets out of the truck. Talking to the alpha while lying or sitting might be too vulnerable for him. “What are you doing here?”

Scott doesn’t know how to answer that. _I wanted to see you_ seems a bit too bold for an opening statement. “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t have any place to stay?”

Defenses on full. “I didn’t think it’d matter to you.”

Scott grimaces at him, and Theo looks ashamed. Theo knows that it would matter to Scott.

Theo tries again. “I didn’t think it was any of your business.” 

“It’s not. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help. I can –“

“Scott, I don’t want your charity.”

“It’s not charity. I’m not rich.” Scott shoots back. He steps forward and shuts the truck’s door firmly. Theo jumps. “You need a shower. You need clean clothes. How …”

“Stop telling me what I need.” Theo’s embarrassed and covering it with anger, and Scott should shut up.

“But it’s true!” Scott doesn’t know how to make it clear to him. He’s looking at Theo and he wants to take him home. Scott has power, but power is useless if you don’t use it. He can use it to move Theo past all the terrible things that have happened during senior year. More than that. Scott can use his power to move Theo past all the terrible things that have happened in his entire life. Wouldn’t that be the responsible thing to do? Wouldn’t it be the right thing to do?

It is definitely what Scott wants to do. 

“Didn’t you already get your merit badge for helping the unfortunate? There aren’t any brass bands here. There’s no one to clap.” Theo spits out. “You really think this performative kindness makes everything all better.”

“I … I don’t know what that means.”

“You’re not trying to be kind to me because you want to be. You’re being kind to me because that’s what someone – your mother, the sheriff, or the memory of your dead girlfriend – what someone tells you that you have to do so you can be a good person.”

The words tumble out of Theo in a rush and Scott can hear the hurt drip from them. These are the truest words that Theo has ever spoke to him; they have come from deep within the chimera’s heart.   
Scott stares at him, taken aback. He thought Theo was smarter than that.   
Doesn’t Theo understand how Scott feels?

“Is this about what I said when you … when I saw you again?”

“Of course, it is. You want to tear me in half. You want me to put you back in the ground. That’s what you really want.” Theo is almost snarling. “Hell, I can’t blame you. It’s how a normal person would act. You welcomed me into your pack, and in return, I destroyed it. You welcomed me as your friend, and in return, I tried to kill you. You barely survived and then you had to spend weeks fixing everything I destroyed. What you said makes sense.” He takes a menacing step toward Scott.

Scott steps back, involuntarily. Fear doesn’t just vanish.

“Only you can’t bring yourself to admit that you’re just like everyone else. You want to pretend that you’re Holy Martyr Saint McCall who’s turned the other cheek, and now you’re going to show everyone how special you are by treating me like you don’t think I’m scum.” Theo’s voice quavered at the last and the turned away. Scott caught the tears gathering at the edges of his eyes. 

Scott remembers the last time he saw Theo like this. It was when Marcel told him he was ordinary. When the Surgeon told Theo he was a failure. Theo starts to walk away, and Scott feels anger boil up from his gut. Theo is going to leave him like everyone else has.

With one hand, he grabs Theo by the shoulder and pushes him back into the door of the truck. Not too hard – Theo isn’t strong enough to give him much of a struggle. “You don’t get to say that.”

Theo must hear something in his voice or maybe he’s surprised that Scott would result to physical force.

“I don’t talk about my feelings much,” Scott says, bitterly. “Ever since people whose opinions I cared about told me that my feelings for my – how did you put it? – _my dead girlfriend_ were obsessive or were a stupid little crush that meant nothing. But I think I’m finally tired of letting people decide the value of what I feel. And that’s what you’re doing right now -- deciding how I feel because you think you know me better than I do. Here’s an idea, Theo. How about you ask me how I feel?”

Theo is still surprised, but he glances down at Scott’s clawed hand gripping his bicep.

Scott doesn’t let go. “Ask me how I feel about you.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel like I don’t want you to go away anymore, Theo. When you came back, I had just gotten used to you being gone. I had been struggling with the idea that my closest friend had vanished and I had forgotten all about him. I was unprepared for my dumbass beta to bring back the man who almost killed me with my girlfriend’s sword without even picking up his goddamn phone and checking it out with me, because he knew I would have told him no. So yeah, I was upset.” His voice was thick around his fangs. His heart was racing and he had shifted, and he didn’t care, broad daylight or not.

“So what do you feel now?” Theo whispers. 

“I want …” Scott hesitates. “I want to see you eat. I want to see you with a roof over your head. I want to see you happy.”

“Why?” No human could have heard that word, even if they were standing next to the chimera. 

“I want you to be my friend. I believe you can be my friend, and I can be yours.”

“Me?” Theo looks wounded, as if Scott’s words reopen an old wound. “You want us to be friends. Did you have a stroke? Do you have amnesia?”

“No.” Scott bit his lip. “I’ve done it before!”

Theo peers at him in disbelief and maybe a little confusion. “Done what?”

“You must have learned about Derek. Do you know that the third time I met him, he broke into my house, snuck into my room, lurked behind me like a deranged stalker, threw me into a wall, and threatened to kill me if I didn’t do exactly what he said.”

Theo blinks. “He did?”

“He did. And he lied to me, and he betrayed me. And I lied to him, and I betrayed him. And we got over it. And now, I would -- I _have_ \-- gone into a hunter’s stronghold to rescue him. There is no doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t do the same for me. He’s my brother. You had to have learned about me, so you know it’s true.”

“I knew you were close, but I didn’t know he did that.”

“And Deucalion!”

Theo’s face wavered. Deucalion’s defeat of him was still a sore spot.

“Deucalion attempted to force me into his pack. He tried to force me to become a killer by using my mother, Mr. Argent, and Sheriff Stilinski against me. He was obsessed with me.”

Theo glanced down at the ground. He knew this. “I thought he hated you. I thought you hated him.”

“That’s how people think I should have felt. I should have hated him. I should have judged him. But now we work together, and because I did that … he was there for me and my pack when we needed it. He’s my ally.” 

“So what, you want to do that again?”

“Yes!” Scott almost shouted. “Why wouldn’t I want you as my friend?”

Emotions play over Theo’s face. There is hope and there is disbelief. There is sadness and anger and maybe a little pride. “Why the fuck would you want to be my friend? I’m everything you’re not. I’m a killer. I’m a schemer. I tore you open and left you to die. I poisoned you.” Theo’s clenches his jaw. He’s trying to understand. “Do you think I was being forced to do it?”

“I think you were taught to do it. I think you were led to believe there was no other way to get what you want. I think you’ve learned differently.” 

“That doesn’t answer my question, Scott.” The gritted his teeth. 

“I’m lonely.” The words hurt coming out. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. But I want something … I want someone … that’s for me. Someone like Allison. Someone like Kira.” 

Theo opens his mouth, but Scott isn’t finished. Scott has to push on because he understands the ramifications of what he just said. Theo’s eyes widen as he begins to understand as well.

“Stiles will always be as close to me as anyone ever could be, but he needs me to be his compass. My bond with Liam is stronger than ever, but he needs me to be his alpha. I wasn’t friends with Lydia until I saved her, and she’ll never forget that. I wasn’t friends with Malia until I saved her, and she’ll never forget that. The same goes for Hayden and Mason and maybe even Corey. Allison is gone forever. Kira is gone, maybe forever. Isaac is gone, maybe forever. I want someone to be with me because they want to be with me, not because they’re obligated to me or I’m obligated to them.”

“I want to be with you?” Theo asks and his voice is cold. Scott’s raw emotions have made him too vulnerable.

“Say you don’t, and I’ll leave you alone.”

Theo remains quiet. Scott lets go of him and his claws recede into his fingers. There are little pinpoints of red on Theo’s shirt. Nothing deep. Scott is suddenly fascinated by those little red marks. 

“I know why you want me. What do you want me for?” Theo’s voice is steadier. 

“I want a friend.”

“How do I do that?”

“By being friends, which means doing what friends do. I see you need some place to stay, and I help. We do things like go to the movies, we play video games, we go swimming, and when summer is over, you help me move to Davis. I know it’s not as exciting as wars between good and evil, but millions of people do these things all the time – it can’t be that bad.”

“And all you want is a friend?”

Scott swallows; he can’t say the words. To do so would be like ripping open his own chest. Everything he said is true, but he hasn’t said the words. He couldn’t bear to say the actual word and have Theo laugh in his face. He has to know whether it’s possible before he can make that leap. “I want someone. Whether it was only going to be as friends or … something more … it wouldn’t have to be more if you didn’t want that.”

“Does it matter what I want?”

Scott takes a breath. “Yes. It does.”

“Well, I’m glad.” Theo replies sarcastically. He turns away and starts walking around the truck. Scott backs away, letting him have room because Theo is obviously gathering himself to answer. Scott waits, anxiously. 

It’s agony. It’s not what Scott meant to do. He hadn’t meant to serve his heart up on a plate to see if Theo wants to take this one as well. 

Theo takes his time. He doesn’t look at Scott for minutes. Scott shuts his senses down. He shuts his hearing down so he can’t hear Theo’s pulse. He shuts his sense of smell down so he can’t catch the emotions coming off the chimera. He closes his eyes, so he doesn’t accidentally witness what’s happening. 

Theo touches his face, and the touch makes him open his eyes. Theo is staring at him, and their gazes lock. “Listen to me, Scott. Listen to the beat of my heart.” Theo takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to be with you.”

Scott feels his heart drop into his gut. It’s not a death blow; he’ll survive it.

“Maybe someday, there might be a Theo who can be part of your pack. Who can play video games with you. Who can participate in Secret Santas and New Year’s Eve parties. Who can waste a whole day with you just shooting the shit. Who can kiss you. But that Theo doesn’t exist yet.” Theo is not angry with Scott. His pulse is steady; his scent is sad.

“I can’t be that. Not yet. That’s not an easy thing for me to say. I don’t want to sleep in my truck. I don’t want to be remembered as the loser who screwed everyone over. I don’t want to be alone. But I … I can’t be the person you want me to be. I’m not the person I was when I went into the ground, but I’m not sure that I’m much of anything right now. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know who I want to be. And until I know that, I can’t be with you … in any way.”

It is Scott’s turn to whisper. “Okay.”

“I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve listened to what you said. I believe you. Now, I want you to believe me. There’s a reason I can’t risk it, and I think you should listen to that reason.” 

Theo took a deep breath. “I’m not a good guy. You are. But sometimes, the good guys can’t see what’s right in front of their faces. I can see it. I see what they’re doing to you, and I see the bullshit that everyone is piling on top of you. There are all these people who see you as, who you need to be the Big Strong True Alpha.”

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“It is if that’s all they see you as. Selfish people like me, we know how to take care of ourselves. People like you don’t. They’re gonna suck you dry, taking what they need from you. You’re not going to go to Davis; you’re not going to go anywhere. You’re going to give and give and give until you don’t have anything else to give, and then they’re going to _bury_ you. The way I used to be, I saw what you were trying to do for them as foolish and weak. I thought it was stupid of you to essentially be ready to give up your life for them.”

“You’re not like that anymore. Liam said you risked yourself for him at the hospital. You stood with me against Douglas. 

“I am different, but I don’t think I’m that different. I’m capable of risking my life for others when my back is against the wall, and I can’t see any other options. But that’s not what they want you to do. They want you to find people to save. I am not capable of standing in that crowd at your funeral listening to people go on and on about how _selfless_ you were. If you want me to be your friend, then you can’t ask me to do that.”

Scott nods once. That thought had occurred to him before. “At least let me …”

“No. If I start, I won’t stop, and I’m not ready.”

“Take my number, at least.” Scott raised up both hands. “It doesn’t have to mean anything, but at least – if you really get in trouble, trouble you can’t handle, you can call me.”

Theo laughs, a disbelieving, humorless laugh. He nods, surrendering. After Theo makes a contact on his phone, he gets into his truck without another word and drives off. Scott stands there in the high school parking lot for maybe fifteen minutes.

He should be sadder than he is, but if Theo wanted to crush his spirits, he failed. Because in that rejection was a repeated refrain that what is now may not always be. It is a slight promise. Theo is not yet ready to be with him. Not yet.

Those words are thin, but they are also hope. And yes, there is always hope.

Scott can imagine it. Maybe a year from now. Maybe five years from now. Maybe ten years from now, he will be at a low point in his life. Maybe he will be surrounded by enemies. Maybe someone he cares about will be dying. Maybe he’ll be standing at work, wondering where his life went, wondering if this was all there was to it. He’ll need help.

It will start like this: Theo Raeken comes to his rescue.


End file.
